


The Kangaroo Graveyard

by OneTrueStudent



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blasphemy, Death, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-12 00:37:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 37
Words: 82,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4458617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneTrueStudent/pseuds/OneTrueStudent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finished as of chapter 37. All sales final. </p><p>I really hope you liked this one. I'm on the fence about it. Let me know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the prologue of the rewrite. Long story short, I think I figured out what the problems were, but they require some work. Does AO3 allow for prologues, or does the first unit of text automatically begin at chapter 1? To avoid later confusion, rewritten chapter 1 is included. That way the numbering should work.

Prologue

If you asked a bunch of physicists what law of physics is the least likely to be overturned, most would say thermodynamics, or the second law thereof. You wouldn't actually get agreement, because physicists are like argumentative cats. But in a vote, the second law of thermodynamics would probably win. With pretty much all physics outside thermo there's fundamental properties of matter that give rise to the natural law, and while it's unlikely anything radical is going to come along and rewrite electromagnetism, it's happened. Charge carrying particles and weak linkages made things screwy. The most basic of physical laws, gravity, is one of those things no one understands or agrees with, and it's locked in a pissing match with quantum. Something's got to give.

Thermo isn't like that. Thermo is just math. Yeah, you've got your canonical ensemble, your microcanonical ensemble, your grand canonical and a dozen more, but where they all agree is you can't get something for nothing (first law), every transaction you lose a bit (second), and you can't get out of the game (third). The second, oddly enough, is the toughest, and it's the one that's least applicable to human society. But the important thing is there isn't a whole lot of physics in there, it's just math. Short of a serious revision to the mathematical concept of randomness, possible but unlikely, there's incredibly little you can do to up-end that. New particles, exotic states of matter, strange fields, none of it's going to overcome the second law unless it overcomes math because the law isn't this thing does that, it's numbers count like so, and we're pretty sure we know how numbers count. 

I'm not saying it isn't possible. I'm saying if I had to pick a branch of physics least likely to get overturned, I'd pick thermo, and in thermo, I'd pick the second law.

What would I pick to get overturned? Gravity. Fuck gravity. No one really understands gravity, and I'm suspicious of the people who claim they do. If your mathematical theory can't analytically describe two things without changing reference frames so one is still, or three things at all, your theory has some problems. It's interesting that gravity is the easiest to experimentally verify. Go outside and drop a rock. By the time you get to a point where it doesn't fall down, you've probably put yourself upside down in a fighter jet or in the middle of a cyclone, and then you built the experiment wrong.

I bring this up because if you asked a bunch of magicians what law of magic they'd vote least likely to be overturned, they'd probably agree on the impossibility of raising the dead, and people have done that.

You can't raise the dead. People have tried. Lots of people have tried. I think the unifying part of the human condition is wishing someone who's dead wasn't. Every mad sorcerer has taken a shot at it, most of the academics have theories about it, and people have worked this problem to the bone. They've experimented with pushing the envelope of how dead is really dead. If someone's heart isn't beating but blood to the brain is still partially oxygenated, are they really dead? What about medically induced comas? An EMT friend of mine, good guy, ate so many carrots he turned orange, once told me that mundane doctors are doing the same thing. But all of this drops away to nonsense because that's all mundane trivia. Once someone's good and dead, really dead, blown up, freeze dried, interred and exhumed a hundred years later, they ain't coming back and magic ain't going to help. That's a rule. Magicians hate rules. Rules are for scientists who don't dare break them. Magic is for the brave, but it won't work if you're dead.

This brings us to the problem of liches, because if even the most bitter, defiant, prodisestablishmentarianism magician can't raise the dead, the second some asshole lich comes along, pops himself out of the grave, and starts sorcerering the fuck out of people with his upraised middle fingers a screaming condemnation of all we know, that magician is violently confronted with the awareness that there's something he can't do, and it's something this other asshole just did. Drives people mad. It's why people keep slamming their heads into the wall. 

Ever heard of Vincent Cornish, greatest magician of the nineteenth century? Not that Crowley guy, he just had good PR. Nah, Vincent Cornish was the real deal. That dude had power. If you made eye contact and opened yourself, even innocently, even to say something like good morning, and forgot to protect yourself, he could slam his will into your mind like a freight train, and then you're clucking like a chicken and picking seeds off the ground with your teeth. The human mouth isn't designed to peck. You look stupid. Cornish used to do it as a party trick, or when someone wanted to be the biggest badass on Earth. Then boom, they're a chicken, and Cornish was getting them to roost on a fire hydrant or something. Quite a number of first-time public drunkards in Scotland in the late nineteenth century were people who pissed Cornish off. 

Cornish could not raise the dead. He tried. He broke every other law of magic. He successfully completed a Rashak experiment and lit fire to a match through cold iron. He cast 'dayglow' through a telegraph. He got the sidhe, the sidhe, to obey the spirit of the deal, and if you think that's just legalese and not magic, you don't know the sidhe. I could go on. But he couldn't raise the dead. Once someone's planted, they're planted, and magic isn't going to bring them back.

On his deathbed he blessed his family and friends, forgave his enemies, and divided up his fortune so half of it went to charity. He sat with the priest from Saint Timothy's and had his last confession. He said, "Father, I think the miracle of resurrection is just God's way of reminding us that for all our power, he's got a few aces up his sleeve we haven't seen yet."

I'm not quite sure how much of his Catholicism was personal and how much of it was Cornish just didn't like the English. I don't think people separate themselves as much as we think they do.

Back to liches. The main problem we have with them, other than the philosophical and egotistical ones stated and implied above, is that as of yet, every one has been evil. Every single one. We're not talking about sort-of evil, either. We're talking about reigns of terror, fire and brimstone falling from the sky to immolate thy enemies, seas to blood, and thousand years of suffering. Let me simplify my morality. If you Krakatoa someone because they won't sacrifice virgins to you any more, you are a bad guy. 

My name is Martin Wilson, and I'm a magus.

 

 

I was in my office when my boss, Edgar Blauc, walked in. "Martin, I need you to go to Australia. Someone's claiming they can raise the dead, and you have to write a report on it before you can go on vacation."

I looked at him over my coffee. He looked serious. He had a red folder in his hand, and that serious expression on his face when he was trying to be management. Very serious. 

"Sure," I said, put the coffee down, opened up my word processor, and typed, "He didn't do it," in big, clear Helvetica. Then I printed, signed, dated, and handed it to my boss. 

"Done. Call me in Bermuda. I have a coupon."

My boss wanted to call me a jackass. Calling his employees 'jackass' is not professional. It doesn't sow the seeds of respect. He was thinking about it. He was thinking it so loud I could hear it over his grinding gears.

"Martin," he said with exaggerated patience. "Go to Australia. Research this matter. Annotate what is going on, why this individual claims to be able to raise the dead, and if the reports do not support the claims, annotate what is properly happening. Do this in a fair and impartial manner."

"But he didn't," I said.

Edgar shook the folder at me. 

"But he didn't!" I repeated, but that was a bit confrontational, so I took the folder. 

Subject's name was Erica Mustermann. Hotel owner, unranked sorceress, claimed ability to resurrect the dead. No political affiliations. No criminal affiliations. Short criminal history, all non-violent: identity theft, larceny, fraud. Fraud? See page eight.

Page eight: Convictions, Fraud. Subject has been convicted in absentia of selling fraudulent power supply-

"She got convicted of selling perpetual motion machines!" I yelled, bounding out of my chair. "She bilked some Chinese guy out of twenty million yuan and fled the country ahead of the police!"

"Yes. But we do not leap to conclusions here."

"I'm leaping! However I see why my earlier report was unacceptable. Allow me to fix it." 

I added an 'S' before 'He didn't do it.'

"Your capitalization is wrong," said Edgar, just about done with me. "Martin. Go to Australia. Check into her hotel. Establish conclusively whether or not she can raise the dead, and file an appropriate report."

"But-"

"Go now. Don't speak."

"But-"

"Hush."

"Can you at least tell me what my budget is?" I demanded, sprawling back into my chair. We had terrible office chairs. It felt like there was a case of bricks in the small of my back, and the armrests never came to the same height. 

"File the appropriate budget request."

"Edgar, come on. What request am I filing here? Am I going solo, or can I submit a request for help? Am I flying right into the local airport, or do I have to land in some major city and get a rental? Is my priority immediacy or cost minimization. Come on, give me an idea what I'm working with."

"Use your best judgement."

I waved the 'SHe didn't do it' paper.

Edgar sort of wanted to strangle me. It was a good thing Mustermann could bring me back. He pursed his lips and glowered at me, and I felt a little sorry. Not that sorry though, because he was postponing my vacation to investigate whether a wanted woman, wanted for selling perpetual motion machines, had discovered a way to raise the dead. And did it in her hotel basement, outside- I flipped to the second appendix -Uluru/Ayer's Rock.

The hell? She was at Ayer's Rock? 

I looked down from Edgar and scanned that page. Yep, Ayer's Rock. It was a little town called Ayer's Outpost. Huge legal battle. There had been some other towns but they'd been demolished. The Northern Territories were suing the Australian Government in European court. They were trying to sue the UN. I don't think you could sue the UN. According to the paper, the UN didn't think they could sue the UN, but the Northern Territories were taking a mighty good stab at it. She'd hired some law firm, MacDonald, Carter, and Macon LLP, from the USA (Ah. Gotcha) and they were handing out lawsuits like lotto tickets. No, the Northern Territories had hired the law firm. Mustermann was somehow associated but only in the confidential pages. Her name wasn't on any of the legalese. 

None of this got to the important matter that an unranked sorceress was running around at Ayer's Rock. That was an issue. 

"She's at Ayer's Rock," I said.

"I know. I read the report."

"Why would she be at Ayer's Rock?"

"Don't know. Maybe you should go investigate that, instead of arguing and looking like a-" Say jackass! Say jackass! "-unprofessional person."

"Okay. Fine. You win. But what am I looking at, budget wise? Class one? Class two? Class eight? Come on, don't send me in blind, and you know they never put budget information in the folder."

Edgar rolled his eyes at me. "It's a class four. You're going to fly into Sydney, get a rental, and drive out. If you want a first-try pickup, fly economy. However, you'll notice she runs a luxury hotel. Rooms start at six hundred a night. If you fight for per diem as determined by immediate locality, the Empire Hotel, instead of extended locality, the middle of the Outback, I'll support you in setting your per diem at-"

I leaned way in for this.

"One thousand dollars per day."

"Hot. Damn."

Do you know how many student loans I could pay off with that? None of them. But if I lived like a shut-in and saved everything, and if this took a week, perfectly acceptable for a class four, I could bank close to two grand, and that's almost a year.

"Mind your manners. This is a professional environment, and your colorful invective is unacceptable. Class four. Submit a budget request by tonight."

"Sir!" I slammed my fist to my heart in the ancient Roman salute. "I think only of my duty!"

Edgar looked vaguely ill. "Yes, Mr Wilson. I'm sure of it. Now submit your paperwork, and go away."

1

Uluru/Ayer's Rock had three hotels as of 2017. A little town, Ayer's Outpost, was growing up between the rock and Highway 4. Two of the hotels had been there for a while and operated under the old settlement. The third was the Empire Resort, a subsidiary of Empire Resorts Northwest, and it wasn't exactly legal depending on which side of the litigation you stood on. I flew into Sydney to go cross country with a couple that shared a rental. The outback's beautiful if you like stark. I tried to be open minded, but I was glad when we got to the Empire.

Of the couple that shared the ride Karen Williams was late twenties, five two, and jacked as hell. Well, jacked. Let me be careful with my words. She'd competed in fitness games, something like the aerobics Olympics, and now taught a series of classes at NY Fitness. Spinning ran from 5 to 6, Aerobic Fitness from 6 to 7, Weight Lifting for Weight Loss 7 to 8, and Women's Self Defense Lunch Hour Blast from 12 to 1. That was her week, Monday through Friday. 

Floyd Mason was a little younger and made the mistake of trying to get a job with an art degree. He thought people would voluntarily give him money. I felt sorry for Floyd. His medium of preference was chalk on wood, weird wood he got in scraps and sanded down, and his fingers were always a dozen colors. He had to spray everything with this adhesive stuff that got confiscated in the US by the TSA, and they'd stolen the fixative from his luggage. They shared an apartment, and when I asked about them two, they said they were friends.

Male and female friends, roommates, alone together on vacation, but just friends? Yeah, I didn't believe them.

Yet they didn't look at each other. They weren't sneaking glances, and more commonly, one of them wasn't sneaking glances while the other pretended not to notice. They sat in the rear seat and stared out the windows, sometimes talking, mostly lost in the scenery. And the scenery was desert. When we got together for meals or rests, they didn't have that increased awareness of each other you see in romantically linked couples, especially couples in denial of romantic links. They were lost in something they didn't share. 

Our tour dropped us off at the Empire. It wasn't a bus tour; it was Hank, a guy in a car with a perverse hatred for intervening space. Hank drove an S Class at speeds that lead us to believe he was actively seeking God. Again, all things considered, we hadn't wanted to say anything but... We were glad when we got to the Empire.

"You have arrived!" announced Hank as he pulled into sprawling overhang. A bellhop hopped and started downloading the trunk as we three piled out. I tipped Hank through the phone and stretched, while other two looked around. 

It was bright and intense red. The desert went on forever in low, smooth rock, and it was an austere barrenness outside the hotel parking lot. Once you looked past a few campers, busses, and cars, the outside was grim. There was stuff. There were little bushes, bits of green, and low hills, but there wasn't softness. Nothing looked easy. It looked like the terrain had been filed down, and the plants were shavings of the country, left to grow in piles.

Ayer's itself was a huge stinking rock. I don't know how to describe it. It's significant. It just bulges there. It's not a fist raised at the sky or some monolithic taunt, but a self contained existence that's totally encompassed in its own being. The lesser hotels, hospitality principalities, gave us a bit of perspective. It was huge in that they were tall, three storeys, and the rock loomed over them.

There aren't a whole lot of good reasons for a magician to be within the three hundred leagues of Ayer's Rock. None spring to mind. Of the bad reasons to be within Ayer's Rock, an awful lot of them are sanctionable. Mustermann claimed to be able to raise the dead.

We looked at the rock, thinking about how it was over three hundred meters tall, and yet broad and squat. It looked like it should be low, yet it wasn't, and the eye kept forcibly reminding the brain of the incredible size of it. It demanded attention. 

Hank said something about calling him for a ride in two weeks.

"We'll keep you in mind. Thank you," said Karen, smiling. Hank agreed and zoomed off. 

The bellhop was already pushing our stuff inside the glass doors, so we turned our backs on our destination and followed. I tried to give him a dollar, but he explained they didn't accept tips. 

I was American. That made no sense.

"Stop pushing the man," hissed Floyd, and we went in.

Floyd and Karen got a double suite, and I was solo next door. We were all on the third floor. The bellhop took us upstairs, and since our stuff was on the same cart, I followed along. They had a common area between the bedrooms, each of which had balcony access, their own bathrooms, and a small kitchen and foyer. It was one continuous balcony, down the length of the Empire, divided by low glass walls between suites. We had a magnificent view of Uluru, which the bell hop explained was what the locals called it. 

"Now you have a kitchen, but you're not going to use it anyway-" he said in the sitting area when Floyd interrupted.

"Why not?"

"You're at a resort, mate. Who cooks?"

"I might," Floyd grumbled.

The bellhop looked at Floyd, glanced around, and leaned in. "Care to say that in the form of a wager?"

"I thought you didn't accept tips?" I asked.

"I don't. But I'll take a fool's money if he's saying something stupid, like he's going to cook in a resort."

"I just might! What if I get drunk and hungry?" demanded Floyd.

"Then you'll try to microwave something, fail, and order room service. Mate, do you know where you're at?"

"You're not Australian are you?" interrupted Karen, while Floyd made expressions of denial. 

"Nah, I'm from Jersey. I've got a cousin who got me this job."

"Then what's with the mates?"

The bellhop, Timothy by his nametag, looked at her curiously. "You know no one's ever asked me that? It's the locals. I'm trying to fit in, talk like they do, but I pick up the accent in bits. People do say mate all the time, so that's sticking, but the other bits don't. Like yeah nah. That doesn't make any sense."

He paused. "It's also because the people who come here are usually foreigners. Lot of Kiwis, but more Japanese, some Chinese, and Koreans. A lot of Brits too, which surprised me. But they all have different accents."

"Do you think about your words a lot?" asked Karen, leaning in. "Are you trying to pick an accent?"

"Not really," he began, and I spaced out.

I stepped onto the balcony with Floyd and admired the view. It's strange how people of the same nationality cluster up while travelling. 

"You got any green stuff?" I asked Floyd.

"No, but I'll find it," he assured me. "It's out there. I can sense it."

"Yes, weed-Spiderman. Are you going to do any drawings of that?" I asked, hitching my chin at the rock.

"I can," he hedged. "It would need to be paper, but I've got a sketchpad and some grays with me."

"Grays?"

"Chalk. Gray chalk."

"You need red and brown."

"Didn't bring any."

"Maybe you can cook some in the microwave."

Floyd suggested I auto impregnate. It was hotter than balls. We went back inside.

"Now, if you really want to irritate a New Zealander, you act like they're Australian. Drives them wild. Also say they spell Zeeland wrong," Tim said to Karen. 

"That's just mean," she said. 

"It pisses them off." Tim shrugged. "Anyway, I gotta get back to work. Call me if you need anything."

"Hey! My room!" 

"You're not with them?" he asked, looking between us. We shook our heads. "Oh. Come on, then."

I got a similar introduction and stepped out onto my balcony. Floyd and Karen were on theirs. There was a miniscule glass partition between us, easily stepped over. Tim finished dropping my things off.

"Oh, one thing. Make sure you seal the doors and windows at night. Don't just close them. Seal them."

"Why?" asked Karen innocently.

"Bugs. We get a lot of them." Tim turned to go again, and Floyd said he would walk with him. They left.

Karen looked at me. "Do they get bugs in the desert?"

"Apparently," I said. 

 

Floyd waited until they were in the elevator. "Where's it at?"

Tim looked at him flatly. "How much?"

"Maybe a hundred."

"Give it to me. I'll get you a bag."

"Nah. I'll hold."

Tim appraised Floyd's clothes and shoes. "I don't think I can take you there."

"Dude. That Karen girl got us this place because her job filed her for the wrong pay. She didn't make any vacation for a year or so. I'm an artist."

"You tag?" he asked.

"No. Classical. Here." They'd stopped, and the doors chimed. Floyd lead Tim to a lobby seat with Empire stationary, taking chalk from his pocket. He glanced around for a subject and looked at Tim. Tim was looking at him strangely. 

Floyd blinked and behind his eyes there was a flash. Gears chugged. In four deft strokes, Floyd chalked the outlines of Tim's face, blended it, and put shadows on the eyes. He smeared chalk with his fingers. Without glancing up he dotted the pupils, blended them, and smeared the crest of the head to form dense, wavy hair. Then he looked up and compared Tim to the paper. He nodded. It had been ten, fifteen seconds. Tim was perfectly contained in the paper, skeptical, a little untrustworthy, but interested in spite of himself.

Tim looked between the paper and Floyd like he was seeing a martian. Floyd tore the pad from under the paper and handed the work over. The bell hop took on his finger tips, cradling the edges of the paper. 

"Balls, mate." 

"Yeah."

"You have to come with me."

"That's fine. When?"

"I get off late. Be by the dumpsters at eleven."

"Right, right. Hit that with hairspray. Get some cheap stuff from a girl and spray it down. Don't go crazy."

"Can you do it?" Tim asked, still holding his portrait reverently. 

"If you get me some hairspray."

"Don't move! I'll be right back!" exclaimed Tim, and he bustled out cradling the paper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Current as of 2/1/2016


	2. Chapter 2

2

The brt-brt-brt of a two-stroke motor buzzed like it would never even out, the rolling of a burred stone that wobbled and bounced, but had too much momentum to stop. The bike was anything but. It bounced and jostled like it was trying to fall over, and the wiry little man on top fought to keep it from succumbing to gravity. The bike never quite forgave him, so it threatened to expire and make him walk every cycle. 

He was almost aboriginal short with skin almost aboriginal brown. His nose was pulled from a Roman statue. His lips and mouth made no sense until you knew his mother was half Congolese, and then you wondered why you needed to be told. He had arabic eyes and Italian ears. His ancestors had been firm believers in the catholicism of fucking. 

He rode the two-stroke Honda off the main road and onto a dirt patch that looked like sand. He dropped off that into a gully that only had a gravel road for the delusionally optimistic. It sank until tall grass formed a curtain over his head. The ranger station was half a kilometer away with their 'No Free Riding' signs and walkways on wooden platforms. They might have been on Mars. The canyon rambled back and forth to the very foot of Uluru and hugged the rock to a hidden crevice. It wasn't secret or invisible. It was a crack in the rock, right out in plain sight, but the rock was sometimes red, sometimes brown and dark, and the crack was easy to miss. It had been thousands of years since it had been found. The gully was easy to find if you knew where to look, and Pato, that was the rider, rode right up into the rock. 

He stopped, the motor stopped, but Pato would get moving again without a wrench. He climbed down and flipped one of the paneers over so the straps made a messenger bag. He trotted up the crack.

About fifty meters inside, a man was bound to the rock with chains at the wrist, ankle, and waist. He looked greek. His skin was too red, though the sun didn't make it in here deep enough to burn him, and there was an old wound, freshly reopened and healed, on his left side. He lay still with a book in his hand, turned the pages with difficulty and practiced care. Closed, the book wouldn't cover his palm.

"Morning, Mathy," said the young man.

"Good morning, Pato," said the giant.

"What are you reading?"

"A survey of psychological experimental methods, as conducted under the same."

"Like it?"

Pato didn't climb the crack, but he walked up it very slowly. His running shoes gripped the stone if he moved his weight just right while the shoulder bag pulled him backwards.

""Perhaps," said the giant. "I distrust their reliance on game theory. Any survey of human nature that prevents cooperation but claims to study man's earlier natures is suspect at best. It is a very short-sighted affair. How was your trip?"

"Good, good. I got something for you."

"Books?" asked the giant hungrily.

"No! I- well, yes, actually." Pato stopped and reach into his bag. "A collection of papers on symmetry breaking strange interactions, and Dutch Masters: the Seascapes."

"Excellent. Bring them here."

"I'm trying!" grumbled Pato and resumed his careful walk up the stone. Underneath the giant's left hand a hollow had been worn into the rock, a smooth hole where the bolt of the manacle scraped the stone. It was not much larger than Mathy's thumb, but Pato put both books inside. He sat down near the giant's hand, which was close to a meter from heel to fingertip.

"But guess what I got that's important!" urged Pato.

"I am no good with guesses. A girl's phone number?"

 

"No. Not that important. Well, not to me. Maybe more so to you."

"That is likely a function of timeframe. Now I have guessed. Tell me."

"A saw!" crowed Pato and took it from the bag. "This is carbon nanofiber, embedded with industrial diamonds. They have been sharpened by rubbing so the blades are but a single molecule thick. These are the things they use to cut the things that cut diamonds."

"Ah, a saw. I should have guessed," agreed Mathy.

"Yeah!"

Pato took the saw out of his bag and the portable generator that came with it. He plugged them together and pulled the cord until a motor caught. This was a new, high quality diesel that rumbled with subtle power. Its noises were deep and penetrating. Pato read the engine needed to run for three minutes before being used, so he crawled up Mathy's wrist to the flat metal chain. It looked a bit like bronze and a bit like iron, though it neither rusted nor corroded. It sank into the rock itself. Pato explored the second link with his fingers.

"I think this is a notch," he said.

"That would be nice."

"It is. I feel it. There's a little notch right here."

"Good, good," said Mathy. While Pato investigated the chain, the giant turned back to the book, turning pages with his thumb.

At the bottom of the crack was a pile of old machinery. A broken pneumatic jack lay on top of blunted files, between the separated limbs of tungsten-carbide bolt cutters. Jewelers tools lay in mounds. There might still be a few brown diamonds in the mix, but Pato didn't look. Once the diesel was rumbling, he put the savage reciprocating bit to the chain and used the clamps from the grinder, the burr polisher, and the acid stand. The saw started to hum. As it rose to a shriek Pato slipped on his glasses and earplugs. Echoes filled the crack. By a twist of geometry the noises never quite made it out to where anyone might be listening. Pure coincidence. 

 

Karen headed down to the pool where she got turned away. They were switching from chlorine to bromine and had used the wrong measure, making swimming possibly fatal. Now there was an issue with water limits for refilling the pool. In the end she went to the sauna and sweated, trying to internalize the heat while she stared at the wooden floor.

A man came in, big guy, looked Slavic, and grunted faintly at her. He sat on another tier of the bench with closed his eyes. A few days in a car left Karen open to conversation, but when the man didn't make any, she returned to her doze.

Karen having decided he wasn't going to talk, he did. "Do you mind if I add water?" he asked. He spoke with a thick Czech accent.

"Isn't this a dry sauna?"

"Either way."

"I'll do it, then," said Karen, as the heat pillar was within arm's reach of her. There was a scoop and a cleverly hidden water bucket on the side. She hadn't seen that before and fiddled with the controls. Once everything was to her liking, so she ladled the suggested amount in. She realized she wanted to talk, but the man's posture was vaguely forbidding. He'd been polite, she thought, but he didn't sit like he wanted to talk. She turned inward again.

"Boxing?" he asked.

Karen blinked at him through the steam.

"What? How did you-"

"Shoulder movement, driven by the hips. Calluses on the hands. Arm development. Boxing." He nodded.

People had commented on her build before, but she'd never been called out on it. She unconsciously looked herself over, but she was wearing a neutral two piece bathing suit, more sports bra and shorts than bikini. Nothing had any boxing logos, nor was it from NY Fitness. She certainly wasn't flexing. She looked up at him.

The man reached out his index and middle fingers, laid together, and tapped twice on the wood. "You'll learn to recognize it. I don't recognize the pragmatic style. They come and go."

"MAG. Manum ad Gladium. My teacher invented it-"

"A blend."

"I didn't say it was a blend," Karen argued.

"They're all blends," the man replied. He rose and bowed to her. "We will meet again. Good luck."

She saw Ayer's Rock, saying, "You too."

He nodded and left.

 

I sat down and read the file. There were no Australians staying in the Empire and fairly few working here. Due to ongoing litigation it was illegal for Australian travel firms, or travel websites using an .au domain, to list the Empire as a destination. Overseas it was fine. Thus the hotel would be a weird mishmash of cultures, the host being almost entirely unrepresented. The legality of locals working in the hotel was complex. There was no contact information on Mustermann. 

So I got a massage, drank a few mimosas, and ate this thing where they wrap vegetables in meat, put that in a cup-cake dish with some stuff like pizza dough and bake it. Fantastic. The menu said it was an indigenous delight.

That was half my per diem surplus, so I grumbled at myself and sat back down to reread. I was on Karen's side of the balcony, because it was a little wider. It was easier to adjust a chair so the light came over my shoulder. She returned from the sauna, still wearing the gym wear. She'd showered, but the desert is hot. Even stepping through the glass doors brought beads of sweat out on her taught skin. 

"Is asparagus native to Australia?" I asked.

"What? How would I know?"

"I think they lied to me," I muttered. That didn't stop me from eating. "Don't make bets with Tim, because that guy will take your money."

She sat on a towel, looking pensively at Uluru. She was still wet and her swim suit clung to her, so I made eye contact. But that demanded her attention. 

She looked at me. "What?"

"You look like you've got something to say," I replied.

She inspected me with a detached look, neither critical nor friendly. Then she told me what had happened. 

"You think he was picking on you? Big guy, picking on women?" I suggested.

"No." She scowled. "I've gotten that. They look at you when they do it. This guy didn't. He was aware of me, but not- He didn't look-."

Karen shook her head and leaned back in the deck chair. It had a soft, alcantara liner and deep cushions. She put her feet up and directed herself at Uluru. Now we both were. 

"Try one of these."

She did. They were good. I got up and put the case files in the room safe. Then I went back out, and Karen was still there, lean and leggy. 

"Do they have a gym here?" I asked.

"Fitness studio. Some machines. Heaviest weight is a ten kilo bell."

I sighed, and we stared at the rock. 

It was a nice place to do nothing, and we did hours of it. Sunset deepened into night. There was a bit of party downstairs but nothing worth getting up for. Around 1 AM Floyd returned. He was baked. He weaved onto the balcony, took the spare chair, and started drawing.

"Find anything?" I asked.

"Hell, yeah. I got red chalk."

That wasn't what I meant but I would be polite. "Nice. Where did you get it?"

"Stole it off a witch doctor. He's Korean. Says the chalk is his curse chalk, and it's got the voodoo on it. We were drinking moonshine."

I stared at him.

"Why would you do that?" asked Karen. 

"It's cursed chalk! It's got the voodoo!" Floyd waved a nub at her and returned to his drawing. "I'm going to make some crazy stuff with this."

Karen had a 'there are no words' moment.

"Look! I did you two."

He had. Karen was sitting in the chair, looking out of the page in shocked horror, and I was behind her, wrapped in red shadows like bloodstains. Floyd darted inside to get his fixative.

Karen put the paper on the table and looked away. She'd put on sweats and got up to lean on the railing, looking eastwards. I got a closer look at the sketch, trying to focus on the play of red and white. He'd blended the colors like a master, and you could see both finger marks and the lines of gradation they implied. He left no outlines, merely varying tints. I tried to focus on that, but it was hard to look away from my own image. Sketched me was sitting behind sketched Karen, looking at her in unbridled evil lust. 

"Excuse me." I got up and walked away. I couldn't stand next to Karen, so I stepped into my rooms. I'd spent half my per diem already, and I should be working. I got the files out and paged through them. 

Karen had left and Floyd was burning one when I stuck my head back out. "You said the witchdoctor was a Korean guy?"

"Yeah."

"Named Kim?"

"Don't know."

"Did he make the moonshine?"

"Probably," Floyd grunted.

How many Korean ranked-thaumaturge homebrewers could there be in Ayer's Outpost? "Any idea what his given name was?"

"Hun? Hung?"

That didn't match up with the files. "Jun? Joon? Yoon?" I asked, running through a few ways to pronounce it. 

"Yeah, something like that."

Great, he was the Korean John Smith. 

"You know the guy?"

"No." But he's wanted for murder. "I may have heard of him."

Floyd shrugged, smoking his joint while he drew. 

There are a couple ways to pull information out of someone's mind, either with or without them knowing about it. None of them work on an intoxicated subject. Jun Kim. That changed everything. Jun Kim was priority 1. My case was only priority 4. A case can't be assigned a higher priority than its budgetary allocation. Jun Kim was priority 1. Since, if we were being realistic, Mustermann couldn't raise the dead, she wasn't even a high priority 4. She really should be a priority 7, but then they wouldn't be able to per diem me enough to stay at her hotel. None of that mattered. Jun Kim was, if this was Jun Kim of the files, priority 1. 

Do you know what I could do to my student loans with priority 1 per diem?

"Hey, did you want to hit this?" Floyd offered. 

I looked through him to his words. "Yes, a hit is definitely called for."

"Then take it." He wiggled the joint.

"Oh. Right."

The great thing about stoners is if you space out while talking to one, they never think twice about it. I took the joint. 

"Where'd you find this witch doctor?" I asked, making conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	3. Chapter 3

3

I knocked on a rusty door hung from decaying hinges on a broken frame. The building was trying to fall down, but the dumpsters on either side were taller than the ceiling, and they refused to yield enough space for a collapse. It was at one end of a broad plain of asphalt ringed by demolished buildings, partially removed rubble, and static wreckers' offices that hadn't seen human beings in a year. Everything was plastered in legal postings or profanity. The hut was no exception.

Someone opened the door. It was a little Korean man with nicotine-stained teeth and hepatitis eyes. He was whipcord thin, unhealthily so, the leanness that comes from terrible diet. Half his caloric intake was probably coffee creamer. When he answered a cigarette was hanging from his lips, partially covering the smell of alcohol. I sniffed. There was isopropyl in there.

"What you want?"

"Are you Jun Kim?" I asked.

"No."

"I'm looking for Dr Jun Kim. I'll pay for any information."

"I no know him. You go away."

Close enough. I sprayed tire sealant into his face.

The sealant hit the cigarette cherry and burst into flame. Kim dropped screaming. Once the alcohol fumes caught, they went up at once, a hollow boom in the confined hut. Reflexively he snapped two lynchpins of Cardiac Implosion but lost control on the third to shouts of "Oh God, Oh God, I'm on fire!" He'd already tapped his power though. The flames went incandescent white and flared up in an immense V. They hit the third rune. Dr Kim lurched and quivered, stiff as a board, and then went limp. The fires glittered once, then got sucked into his body like a hard gasp. The inside of the hut went dark, save the rectangle of intruding daylight. I crouched to step into the hut and shut the door behind me. 

The room was low and long, somewhat human friendly in front with walls and scraps of carpet, but towards the back the sides of the wreckers' dumpsters stood bare. The asphalt stopped about halfway along, near where the walls ended, and the further reaches of the hut were dug into red dirt. There was a bed or a nest or something down there where a human being might sleep. It was by a car-radiator still. The whole place reeked of pot and tobacco, and hummed with flies. 

There were some old milk bags filled with flat tap-water I wouldn't trust to drink, but I poured them out into the dirt and stirred up a bit of mud. It made a good, frothy sludge. I dropped some bits of algae into the mix, a few dried lily pads, and a plastic bag of dried flowers. They smelled nice. Then I hissed a little and waited, scratching a note on a pad. 

"Please confirm identity." I put his fingerprints at the bottom of the page. By this point the mud pool was dark and still, and I hissed again. A small brown frog climbed out of the dirt to start eating flies. 

Good enough. I keep two things racked, Subtle Messenger, because I'm always using it, and Disappearing Ghost Steps, which I haven't used yet. Both were primed and ready. Subtle Messenger can be written with one lynchpin, but I normally work it with two so I don't hit it accidentally. Even without that, it only takes a few minutes to do a full workup, but I was in a hut with a dead guy, so I was interested in haste. I hit the lynchpins, and the pool stirred. The center twisted like a whirlpool, and Emily looked out.

Emily is a frog. She's brilliant orange, shorter nose to tail than a finger, and very shy. She's also deadly poisonous to the touch. She didn't want to carry the note until she'd been bribed with petting, and I certainly wasn't going to force her. There was a bit of toothbrush on the floor I scratched her head with until her eyes rolled in circles. Then she climbed down into the muck, and I put the toothbrush somewhere I wouldn't touch it accidentally. 

Ten nervous minutes passed. I checked the outside through holes in the door. No cops or anyone else arrived. There should be no witnesses. More little frogs were snapping up flies in the pool. Emily climbed out and waited, holding a return cylinder.

The IEO of Tragic Accidents always uses very elegant little message tubes of intricately woven grass. They're waterproof to twenty meters, not vaguely water resistant like the notepads I use. This one was sealed in wax with a sculpted crest no larger than a pencil eraser. It was a water lily, and texturing in the stamp rendered each of the twenty two petals in three colors, all of the same wax. Emily wouldn't give it to me until I petted her again, after which she sat on her lily pad like a satiated queen. 

"Identity confirmed: Dr Jun Kim. Priority 1 target. Contract payment delivered June, 2012."

I stared at that for a few seconds, and then wrote, "What do you mean delivered June 2012?" 

Emily and I repeated our ritual, with me far less amused. She brought the reply.

"Delivered: Past tense of to deliver. To have arrived at a destination (the place where the thingy is going). Example: The contract payment was **delivered** June, 2012 when the contract was paid due to a tragic accident befalling Dr Jun Kim in May, 2012."

I looked at the corpse. He was pretty dead, but he wasn't five years dead. He wasn't going to get any deader in the next five years, but he couldn't have been dead in the last five years either...

I thought for a long time.

...except Mustermann claimed to be able to raise the dead.

"Was a body recovered?" I asked, going through another exchange. I'd been in the hut for almost half an hour now.

Among our circles asking if a body is recovered is an implication heavy question. It calls into doubt the record of a previous incident, and Tragic Accidents takes its accidents very seriously. They don't happen by chance. Emily returned with an anaconda carrying a waterproofed bronze case. In that case was Dr Kim's complete file, including death certificate. The short answer was no, a body hadn't been recovered because a fourteen cylinder engine for an oil tanker had fallen on him. 2300 tons of metal don't leave a body. Fragments of biological material had been collected, but it was a 'clean him up with a squeegee' type accident. Besides, the engine was mostly cold iron. There was no way he could have magicked his way out of it.

I don't know about in the wild, but in Tragic Accidents an anaconda will eat anything. This one slithered to the body and got to work. I wrote a short note, "Please reexamine contract status. Physical evidence submitted with IEOTA messenger. NRN, thank you," for Emily to take back and Ghost Stepped away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	4. Chapter 4

4

Jun Kim

Cause of Death: Incineration of internal organs

Autopsy Note: Heart and lungs were incinerated when Subject summoned lava in his own vitals. Circumstances are consistent with lynchpin solecism of Immolant Petrification. Immolant Petrification is indistinguishable from 'Vanati Blessing' while racked, but replacing the 'Vanati Blessing' lynchpins with those of 'Cardiac Arrest,' itself primal assault magic, results in a conjuration effect. Death was instantaneous. Subject may have been distracted by being set on fire, and the resonance of mundane fire about the head and shoulders while speaking lynchpins was sufficient to drive the spell while Subject made casting errors.

Identity: Fingerprints match subject to Jun Kim of the Madre Oscura syndicate to better than 99.98%. DNA matches to within 1 in greater than 4,000,000. Dental and cornea records are not on file. Substantive environmental factors are misleading. Dr Jun Kim was fluent in English and noted to speak with a slight Hawaiian accent, but also noted to affect incomprehension. See Biography for examples.

Contract: IEOTA has entered Jun Kim's identity into arbitration. Contract has already been paid. Does Field Agent petition to have earlier award revoked and reissued?

Reply requested  
[Y]/[N] ?

 

Which stone-cold murderer had already been paid for this, and did I want the office to claw his money back and give it to me? I wasn't sure about that. I'd gone through the Ayer's Outpost brief a dozen times, looking for more information on Jun Kim, but he appeared only tangentially. In the 90s he had spent some time here and was listed as possible resident. The Office's filing system being what it was, there was nothing else.

I didn't want to think about the contract, so I looked at Vanati Blessing. It was one of the more advanced fire-healing techniques. People think you can't use fire and healing together. Silliness. Yes, you usually use water, but that only makes sense. The body is mostly water, excess is removed discretely, so on and so forth. Any of Aristotle's elements can be used for healing. Earth is great if someone's bleeding and you want to stop that quick, or if bones are broken and need to be realigned. Air's good for the lungs, the eyes, etc. Fire is good for burning away impurities, and I could see why Kim would have it racked. From the look I got of him, he had cirrhosis bad. A little Vanati would do wonders. A little Vanati wouldn't be nearly enough if he was a bad alky, but he'd be able to walk anywhere with that racked. Alkies have a way of telling themselves they're under control. Maybe Kim thought hitting himself with Vanati from time to time would be enough.

"Subject may have been distracted by being set on fire," I read, snorting. "May have been." Whoever wrote that had never been on fire. Some experiences cannot be understood by those who haven't felt them. Any idiot who thinks being on fire "may have been" distracting...

I stopped myself.

This thing stunk. I don't know what I had been doing, cowboying off after this guy. The more I thought about it, the weaker my case was. If I'd looked, I wouldn't have cowboyed off at all. He had a ship engine dropped on him. This dude was gone.

Except...

I would put money on the ship engine being faked, the earlier DNA being wrong, someone Rashaking a tragic accident through cold iron before Mustermann bringing someone back from the dead.

I sent a message in. "See file on current assignment. Revocation of contract is only for contracts found not to have been originally carried out. Is revocation mandatory in this case?"

They not-answered me quick.

"Does Field Agent consider reanimation likely enough to be entered onto the record?"

Cagey little- There was no way I was going to answer that either. "Field Agent does not render judgement until research is complete."

"Noted."

I looked at the minibar which had top shelf booze and little plastic cups. There were the omnipresent little packages of snacks. They had pocky. I kept meaning to try some of that.

"Unattached to the record, who was the previous contract recipient?" I wrote and sent.

The reply arrived quickly. "The Rooster."

I didn't reply. I didn't end the conversation. I left Emily in the sink, went to the bar, ignored the pocky, and poured myself several stiff drinks.

 

I'd Ghost Stepped back to the Empire and hurried upstairs. Now I descended to support my alibi and asked an insufferably cheerful woman to get me a taxi. Ayer's Outpost was too small to have local taxis. There was a shuttle that ran between Yulara, Petermann, and here twice a day. Getting to Alice Springs was outside the pall of reason. Once I'd established conclusively I was at the Empire at about the time of Kim's tragic accident I started paging through Trek on my phone. There was only one driver: Hank.

I summoned Hank. I didn't want to do it, but I did.

He appeared in smoke and dust in a black car. It rumbled like an implicit threat. I tapped the shotgun window.

"Mind if I sit up front?"

"Yeah, nah."

I had been told of this! I slid in and asked about heading to Alice Springs.

"You in a hurry?" asked Hank.

"The way you drive is your business, not mine," I replied.

"Quite right, gov'nor. Cheerio!"

He thought British accents, specifically English high society, were hilarious. He affected them for all of his jokes. I'd always thought I had a fairly generic west coast American accent, but every time he started Britishing me, I wondered if I was talking funny. My distraction lasted long enough to see us well outside Ayer's Outpost, and with Yulara vanishing behind and Uluru silently portentous to the right, I accidentally looked at the speedometer.

It lied. It was in kilometers, and kilometers are shorter than miles. There's two or three kilometers to a mile, so we were moving at a brisk but reasonable clip.

There was a subdued "ribbit" from the glove box.

We both heard it. Even over the banshees in the exhaust, we both heard it. Hank looked from the glove box to me, and since I couldn't answer any questions, I went on the attack.

"What the hell is that?" I demanded.

"What's what?" retorted Hank.

"That!" I yelled and opened the glove box.

It was full of poisonous frogs. Red, blue, green, there were hordes of the deadly little things, carrying bits of message and paper. They clung to the sides of the door, hid behind the pages of the car manual, and watched us suspiciously.

"Why are you carrying frogs in your glove box?" I asked.

"I'm- You put them there!"

"I never touched your glove box."

"You must have!" He made faces of distrust.

"You've been in the car the whole time! Did I ever open this?"

He stumbled on that, and we began to slow. I suddenly realized how fast we had been going when I got into a shouting match with the driver, so I continued in my most soothing, peaceful tones. "Why don't you pull over for a moment, and we'll sort this out."

"Nah, they'll be fine," said Hank and slapped the box shut. He started recovering lost speed.

"Dude."

Hank dropped into fifth where RPMs soared and carried us back to terrifying. He watched the tachometer like a smack fiend and when the spoon boiled slapped the paddle again, gliding into sixth. The needle kissed the skin. He sighed in soft ecstasy.

There was a ribbit under my seat.

I had poisonous frogs carrying messages under my seat.

"Dude, you got frogs in your car. Slow down."

"Mate, this is Straya." Hank continued to accelerate.

God damn jackasses, this was like New Yorkers pretending to be jaded by everything. It drove me nuts. I was getting spammed. I really needed to read these messages. Fine.

I slipped on latex gloves and rooted around, pulling out weapons-grade frogs from between the seat posts. I stuffed them in a pocket, separating the frogs from their messages. Like any normal person, my pockets were specially designed to protect me from cutaneous toxins.

"Return to incident site and confirm activity of Erica Mustermann. Incident has called into question previously settled contracts, and priority has been upgraded," read the message.

"Negative. Departing incident site for trail obfuscation. Return path not provided."

I wrote that on the back of the message and ignored Hank yelling at me about frogs. I palmed one using sleight of hand tricks I'd learned in junior high, reached down to pull more frogs from under the seat, and put the message carrying one back. He (maybe she. I'm not a biologist) hopped away, and I pulled out two more. Their messages were repetitions of the first one.

"What are you doing!?" yelled Hank.

"Eyes on the road!"

"What are you doing with all these frogs?"

"What are you doing with all these frogs!?"

"I don't have any frogs!"

"The frogs say you do and would you please slow down?"

"Hey! When did you get gloves?"

"They were in your car."

"No, they weren't!"

Hank finally slowed down. He guided the Mercedes to the shoulder, pulled over into what felt like oncoming traffic, and rounded to face me.

"What is going on? I've got frogs in my car, and I know I didn't put them there, you're wearing gloves, and I know those weren't in here either, and you're doing something. Tell me what's going on."

Interesting. In moments of stress he subliminally matched accents with me.

I looked at him loftily. "No, I'm pretty sure you're a black market frog smuggler, and I don't know what you're talking about."

Compound frog pressure overcame the glove box latch, and it spewed poisonous amphibians over my lap.

With grave seriousness I opened the car door, stepped out, and began dancing like an idiot, scattering Subtle Messengers around the road. Hank slammed on the gas, drove a hundred yards, pulled over, and began doing his own "I'm covered in poisonous frogs" idiot dance in the road. Having completed mine I ran him down and got back into the car.

There was a freaking owl in the back seat, and someone was trying entirely too hard. While Hank was otherwise occupied, I read the message.

"Field Agent is instructed to go back to incident site. Time is critical."

"Field Agent has expended class four budget and awaits return transportation. ETR is two days."

I gave the owl the message, it pecked me, and I let it go. Hank stuck his head back in the car.

"What the bloody hell is that?" he demanded.

"What's what?" I asked.

"The owl!"

"What owl?"

"That-" He lapsed into obscenity and noticed the owl was gone. Hank stared at me. I gave him 'you're crazy' eyes. He bolted out of the car and looked around, but there were no owls in sight. The mid afternoon sun was bright, and the skies clear. He jerked back to look at me.

"What is going on?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," I replied.

A kangaroo fell out of the empty sky, kicked Hank, and hopped over to me. It was carrying a hundred grand in clean bills and a message.

"Go back to incident site and confirm Erica Mustermann is or is not capable of raising the dead."

I took both, and the kangaroo hopped off into the Outback. Like they do. This was perfectly normal. I pocketed the money.

"I changed my mind. I'd like to go back to the Empire, please," I said.

"What the ---- was that?" Hank demanded.

"An unusually ripped kangaroo."

"What? Roos? No. They're all like that. I mean- What is it doing?"

"Hopping."

"Listen you right-" Hank began exploring the unfriendly parts of his vocabulary again.

I had a few options here, and all but one were terrible. I could let Hank leave, and wait alone alongside one of the admittedly more travelled roadways in the middle of nowhere. The afternoon was lengthening into evening. I could let Hank leave and walk back to Ayer's Rock. We'd only been driving for a few minutes, so how far could we really be? I could break the veils of silence and get myself killed. Or I could take option D.

"This is the deal. Here's a thousand dollars. Shut up. Ask no questions. Take me to Ayer's Outpost now," and I offered him money.

"Two thousand," he said.

I peeled off another bill.

"Actually, I want ten thousand."

"No."

"You're stuck in the middle of nowhere," said Hank. "No ride, no water, no nothing."

"A kangaroo is about to hop up behind you and kick you in the head," I replied.

Hank whirled, and there was nothing there. Then he whirled back. Then he stared up at the sky, and spun in circles, looking for falling marsupials. He turned his attention back to me with wild eyes full of distrust and panic. I waved the money.

Australians have cool, multicolored bills with little foil bits and holograms. They're a lot more exciting than US money, but they don't have the subtle implication of deep finance. With US money you're tapping into the economy of a global superpower, and should calm down and be serious. Develop opinions about the Federal Reserve while you're at it. A flat two grand in Aussie money means you can upgrade your suspension and start thinking about carbon ceramic brakes. They're shiny in the sun, the only spots of color in the stark expanse of the Outback.

"So the frogs were yours?" Hank asked.

"I have no idea," I lied without even trying to sell it. "Drive me back to Ayer's Outpost. I am now in a hurry."

He twitched. He wrestled with his common sense and carefully urged all the rest of the frogs from the vehicle, checking the little compartments and hidden storage areas that weren't secret if you knew where to look. I waited. When he stood up, he took the money.

"Get in. No weird stuff."

I shrugged philosophically, and we drove back to Uluru.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	5. Chapter 5

5

The 4 swept past Uluru to the north, heading towards the Tjala, and then cut south past Yulara to come to Ayer's Outpost. We decelerated to something resembling sanity. The rock grew beyond flat plains.

"Uluru is growing," said Hank, unconsciously mirroring my thoughts. "The word. It used to be only called Ayer's Rock. First they started using both, and then switched the order so it's Uluru first. The people I talk to usually call it Ayer's Rock, like the town, but I think that's just because of familiarity. Ayer's Rock sounds better in English. Once people get used to Uluru, it will probably take over."

"Like Manhattan," I said.

He glanced at me.

"Manhattan's the native name of the island," I said.

"Do you know what tribe?"

I opened my mouth to hazard a guess, but thought better of it. "No."

He nodded.

The Empire was eight stories tall and tiny. It dwarfed the other buildings in town, few of them coming to the level of the third floor terrace that marked the height of the convention center and office complex attached to the resort, and then soared above them. Its spire was an incomplete, jagged mess of cranes and I-beams. Glass for the first six stories, the top was veiled in Tyvek. 

But above it was Uluru, unquestionably seizing the sky. The rock didn't even try. It was low, squat, and flat, but that low, squat, flatness happened to be a thousand odd feet in the air. It brought attention to the sweep of the horizon, that which was lower and flatter, but by similarity, seemed as high as Uluru. The ground in the distance lorded over the rock up close, that stood over the Empire, but the Empire ruled the ground up close. Part of the Tyvek broke away and flapped like a translucent flag. Little people fought to bring it back in.

Hank pulled up to the Empire's main entrance and opened his mouth to ask a question. I gave him his two grand to shut up. He shut up. I got out and off he went. Then I closed the transaction on Trek, hitting, 'recommended tip.' I didn't want to do any math.

Inside I went to the main desk and asked about the business area. The woman behind the counter asked me if she could help me with anything.

"Yes. I'm looking for a Ms Erica Mustermann."

She looked at me. Her smile never touched her eyes, leaving her face unchanged as her lips peeled back from her teeth. 

"I'm not familiar with that person, but if you leave a message, I'll put it through to my manager. Perhaps he can help."

I wrote down my name, room number, and wished I had a business card to attach. The desk lady took it, her nametag introduced her as Clara, and she was still showing a lot of white, sharp teeth. 

 

IEOTA hadn't frogged me again when I got to my room, so I looked up Karen and found her sun worshipping on the balcony. I stepped over the glass partition to join her, and Floyd burst out, dragging us after him to a party. I could have refused, but he was my one contact so far. I didn't want to make a scene. Karen pretended to complain, but she was a nice golden-brown already. She looked like she was ready for people to talk to. We let the little artist hustle us down the hallway to a room that thudded with constrained music.

"I do have to warn you, there's an exotic dancer," he said, pushing through a door leaking bass and strobe light.

Karen's face snapped shut. She wrapped herself in cynicism, and I could hear the little Karens of her mind closing doors and barring the gates. She rolled her eyes like portcullis winches, but we were here, so she followed us in. Her defensive scorn was torn open by the dinosaur.

The dancer wore a dinosaur costume. Not a halloween party costume, she wasn't in underwear, clear heels, and a plastic tail pinned to her tail. Immense T-Rex jaws covered her face. Little arms were strapped at their little wrists to her elbows, and a vast, billowing lizard body floated around her. The tail was a meter long.

She worked it. Her haunches dropped as she threw dino-ass sideways, grinding, and her pelvis rolled underneath. She bent like a forward biased biped, slid up a pole, and began to writhe. Floating dinosaur body rolled as her hips bowed.

For the first time in my life, downstairs called my brain first. "Eh? We can, if you want, but the boys and I need a little guidance down here."

I turned to a flabbergasted Karen. "So that's, ah-"

"She's got feathers. Look at her. She's got little feathers."

I looked. Yes, it was dermatologically correct. She was a feathered T-Rex. Correct-ish. Some allowances had been made, because sure and jam the T-Rex didn't jiggle like that.

"Yes," I told myself. "Yes, indeed."

You couldn't see any skin, which was the confusing part. A bit of arm, a bit of leg, but outside of a culture of eskimos in burkas, no envelopes were pushed. But she rolled. She dipped and jiggled. She squirmed up the pole and predatorily stalked down it.

"We have a pole dancing class at work. It's a good total body workout. Drives traffic," said Karen. "Never seen anyone do it in a dino costume."

Floyd reappeared from within. He admired the dancer with us, huge grin on his face. "I know! Great, right?"

I struggled to find words before admitting defeat with, "Yes, it's amazing. Why is she in a dinosaur costume?"

"No idea. Come meet Nick."

Boom, the girl moved, sidling up and spinning. Nether-me reported the operation a success. Someone threw a teddy bear up on the platform, and we paused to see what would happen.

T-Stripper was halfway down the pole, descending head first while her tail looped in great circles. Disco balls hit her with lazers. She saw the bear and circled, latched to the bar with her feet and one hand in an absurd display of abdominal strength. She writhed, the colors matching her hide like shadows in a cretaceous jungle as she stalked the bear. Then she pounced, and with a twist she snapped its neck and ripped the bear's head from its body.

The room went nuts. There were five or so other people, and we screamed and applauded. The girl stood up, a giggly-sort of bow, and went off stage. Someone turned the music to something generic.

"Damn," I said.

"Right?" belated Floyd, looking to Karen for affirmation.

Karen was torn. The little Karens of her head were grumbling amongst themselves, refusing to forget their broken walls, but ultimately forced to admit, "Okay, that was pretty cool."

"Yeah, right!?" exclaimed Floyd and dragged us off to meet Nick.

"That is the sexiest I have ever seen someone wearing a tent," I said.

Karen started laughing, and Floyd looked pleased.

"Seriously. I'm not talking about a voice or personality, which we all know is really sexy. No, I mean brute physical sensuality from someone wearing a tent. I don't know what to do with this experience. I can't go camping again."

"Or you should go camping more," said Floyd, throwing the slow, perverted head bob. "Just you and a double-dome alpine explorer, all alone."

I shot Floyd with double finger-guns and saw Uluru.

We found Nick in the next room, flirting with a bored woman who took our arrival as an excuse to leave. Nick didn't look upset. He was a wiry guy with close cropped head and beard. They looked like they got over styled when he had time to kill. From the moment we met, I never saw him stop moving. His hands, his feet, his eyes or mouth, something was always going. Floyd moved over, and Nick pounced on the opportunity for activity we presented. He got us drinks. He offered us food. He interrogated us for personal detail in a breathless, excited tone, relishing every facet as an opportunity to converse. Endearingly he wasn't obnoxious about it. Plenty of people take your words as a necessary evil between hearing their own voice. Nick wanted to listen, but he was so hyper he rarely won the battle to shut up. Still, he was a likeable guy and pressed us for details about our lives with infectious enthusiasm. I told him my spiel about being a research physicist.

"I do hardware design," I said. "Right now I'm attached to a strong-coupling measurement, and we just finished our data run. The last few years have been hectic, and we can't do anything until the data guys finish decrypting the results, so I'm taking vacation."

"Why do you encrypt your results?" asked Nick.

"They're not encrypted for security. It's just pure data right now. The noise hasn't been filtered out, and nothing's binned. We have a billion odd points, so it's unreadable in raw form."

"Did that take a while?"

"Nah. We run a thousand incidents a second, so only a few weeks."

I'd used this before, so the details were fresh in my mind. I was interested in Karen's deal, so I asked her about herself. Nick obligingly shifted fire.

"I'm a professional fighter," she said and blew away anything else said.

"You're a what?" Nick yelled as I startled. Floyd grinned. He loved seeing people hear that.

"I'm a boxer. I fight for the WWBO."

"No kidding? What's your, ah, rank?"

"Forty fifth, internationally at featherweight," she said. She tried to say it dispassionately, but leaked pride. "Right now I'm between contracts, but I'm on a four win streak, so my renewal is a lock-in. During my training I can't take time off, so I'm here now."

"Are you serious?" asked Nick. 

She nodded.

He took his phone out and googled her. Moments later he exclaimed and hopped around. Karen Williams's profile, glamour shot, and stats were proudly filed on the WWBO homepage with her highlights, best wins, and record. She was 13-2 professionally with one stoppage and nine unanimous decisions. 

"You could kick my ass!" yelled Nick.

Karen smirked.

"That is so hot. Let's have sex."

"No."

"So why do you have a job?" I asked, thinking of the schedule she'd told me.

Karen paused with her mouth open, about to reply, and deflated. "All the money in boxing is at the top. The champ can do it exclusively, and probably the first five contenders. Below that there just isn't enough purse money after training costs. It's even worse in women's boxing, which doesn't command the viewers of men's boxing yet."

"But you're still the forty fifth best boxer in the word?" asked Nick.

Karen's surge of pride hadn't yet recovered from the stumble. "As ranked by WWBO, among women, at my weight class."

"Don't say it like that! Say it with pride! Say Grrr! Let me see your killer face." Nick snarled at her.

"No. What do you do?" she asked him.

"I am an investigator," he announced, and threw his head back, hands on hips triumphant. "I'm a lawyer. I travel around on fact finding missions for the office."

"Are you here about the UN thing?" she continued.

I noticed Floyd had wandered off, talking to the girl Nick had been hitting on. She didn't look as bored, so he'd probably played the artist card.

"Peripherally," Nick said to Karen.

"What's up with that?"

"Yeah, I thought you couldn't sue the UN?" I added. Mustermann was involved in this somehow.

"Incorrect," he chided me, waving his hands. "What you mean is you can't win a judgement against the UN. Anyone can get sued. All you need is a court with jurisdiction and file the paperwork. Boom, you're sued."

"Who has jurisdiction over the UN?" Karen asked. "They're the highest body in the world."

"Yes and no. Remember they've got a lot of sub-agencies. These agencies need offices and to pay their employees. No one would rent them space if they couldn't sue if the UN refused to pay rent. Most court systems when they've got a presence have at least some jurisdiction over them. Back to what you meant, you mean it's impossible to win. This is sort of true, but winning doesn't necessarily mean getting a favorable judgement. Most cases settle. The litigants in this one seem to be fighting a delaying action, wherein they're trying to compel a settlement in a related case. They want to establish a pattern of traversal over the UNESCO World Heritage label."

"So you're involved in the-" Karen waved her hand around, taking in the hotel and environs. She moved more gracefully than the spastic gestures Nick employed. "-fracas?"

"No. I work for a different firm. We want to see how things turn out."

"And what's the whole deal over?" I asked. 

"Height regulations. Long story short, hotels can't be built more than three stories tall near Ayer's Rock. The Empire is eight. The locals want the Empire torn down, and the Empire management want's to go up to thirteen. Profit ensues." Nick winked.

"Who do you think will win?" asked Karen.

For one breathless moment Nick stopped twitching. "I have no idea," he admitted. "That's what I'm here to investigate."

"For who?"

"That I can't tell you."

"Hey, dude! Not you, you. Dude, come here!" interrupted Floyd, sticking his head in from the other room.

I was the dude so solicited. "Excuse me," I said and walked out.

"Give them a minute. Besides, you need to come with me," explained Floyd, outside. The girl was gone.

"Why give them a minute?"

"Dude, are you blind? She wants to talk to him."

"Yeah, but-" I stopped and sputtered out.

Floyd had been looking over his shoulder as he bustled me away, but stopped and turned. He looked me up and down, blinking to frame me in time, etching my mannerisms on his memory. 

"Oh," he said in sudden understanding.

"What?"

"Wow, that was incredibly obvious," he said to himself. "I can't believe I missed that. Your comment about the dancer threw me off."

"What?" I repeated.

"You called another woman sexy in front of Karen." 

"What!? She was doing a sexy dance on a pole in a T-Rex costume! That's worthy of note!" I yelled.

"Exactly. Speaking of, come here." He accosted a young woman who was sweat-soaked, refilling her glass from the sink. "This is her."

She didn't look like she'd heard my yell because we were in the main party room. It wasn't large, and the walls thumped. The sound-proofing must have been incredible. The woman looked dehydrated, throwing back water and Gatorade from the mixer bar equally. She was wearing normal clothes, pants, open-toed sandals, and a jacket thrown over a blouse. It wasn't a real jacket. It was one of those flimsy, fake jackets that served no purpose, but the Outback gets shockingly hot, so her jacket's very uselessness had taken it around the circle back to utility. Floyd introduced her as Allison, and then ran away to conduct a session in the bathroom.

"You did the dance earlier?" I asked.

"I did."

"That was amazing," I said with perfect honesty.

Allison smiled. She giggled like people addicted to compliments do when they get their crack. She was, even perhaps especially while sweat soaked, easy to look at. It was hard to tell under the flashing spin of the laser light, but she had a way of moving about her. She shimmied. She took every compliment the best way and responded with rapt attention.

After flattering her, an oddly relaxing activity given how honest I could be, I asked, "So what's with the dinosaur costume?"

"I used to be very into cosplay. I still am but not as much. A lot of cosplay is very over-the-top, fall-out sexy. It's an excuse to show skin. But it's not just for attention, because the costumes in the shows and movies look like that. I like doing some of both, the sexy stuff and the stuff that's not too revealing. I got into exotic dancing while in cosplay, but a lot of costumes you can't move in. It's the way they're built. Because they're barely staying together at all if you move they fall apart. That's when I got the idea of doing the exact opposite, a costume you could move in completely that didn't reveal you at all. Now the arms, inside of the legs, and torso have to be thin for freedom of movement, but-"

 

Floyd and Magog the Destroyer were in the bathtub, passing a spliff. Everyone else had left. Floyd had lost his sitting-near-the-faucets privileges when he'd hosed them both, so the huge, shaven-headed slav was under the dog nose tap, his legs hanging over the tub wall, and the little artist sat facing him, leaning against the sloped back wall. The rule was smoke it or pass, so Floyd was letting Magog sit on the joint so he could soliloquize.

"What the problem is," Floyd said. "Is that Martin doesn't live in the city. He's a good dude, but he's not from New York. He's not even from, like, Long Island. It's not that I didn't notice. I might have, but I didn't really, but that's because I wasn't looking. See, Martin's not from the city, and to understand that, you've got to understand Karen. I can't live with the woman.

"Karen wakes up at the asscrack of dawn on weekdays, but she also ass-cracks dawn on weekends. She just broke up with her boyfriend, well, not just, but sort of just, so she's always home. I can't get anything done. She lets me slide on the rent, so I'm not complaining, but she's always home, watching TV in her pajamas. The TV is a distraction machine. I can't handle it.

"I need absolute silence. There can be no noise. There can be no distractions. I must get rid of Karen. So when I met Nick and found out he's from Staten, I was like, jackpot. Karen meets Nick. They date. On weekends she sleeps at his place, and on weekdays she's out or in her room on the phone, or really, I don't care, but I have silence.

"So I introduce them, and I'm like, Martin, let's give them a minute, well, not at first because I introduce them and leave but Martin doesn't get the hint, so I have to come back and be all like, Martin, come here, and then Martin's all like, I'm about Karen, and I'm like, that just won't work. Martin's not even from New York. Best case they do long distance, but then there's no dating, she can't sleep at his place, and after being on the phone for forty hours a day, she won't go out because she would do that, but that means she never leaves. No. Now Karen's kinda about Martin. Not really, but he's there, and she's kinda, so Martin has to go. So I introduce him to Allison, because she's distracting, and I don't see what the problem is. He's white. She's white. Bang or something."

Floyd paused in frustration with his hands in the air, and Magog gave him the joint. "Smoke that."

Obligingly Floyd puffed, but Magog didn't hold conversation. Eventually the silence overcame Floyd so he jave the splif back to resume his expose.

"It's distractions. Distractions. As an artist, I love butts. I love butts. I love butts too much. I can't handle the distracting booty. See, I need to get stuff done. Up until a point, I was all about the booty. I love it. But I never got anything done. Well, I mean, I got the booty." Floyd pantomimed grabbing glorious ass cheeks. "But I can't work with distractions. And I made the choice. I'm only twenty seven, but the masters were old by twenty seven. Twenty seven means there isn't much time left. So I made the choice. I had to. 

"But landscapes aren't relaxing. They're not easy, not austere, stark realms naked earth. The bones of gaia are hard, hard to travel, hard to endure, and hard to chalk. To capture them, find the naked earth soul, I've got to put work in. I've got to focus, and I can't do that if I'm just thinking about butts. I made the choice. I had to think about it, but I made the choice. I'm not great, but I think I could be, but I'm not going to be if I just draw butts. No one cares about butts. I care about butts too much. But butts aren't enough. I want the bones of nature. I want the underlying form of the earth.

"So I put aside my distractions, and it's killing me, but I can't get it done until I get rid of Karen. She can't move, because I need her, but I need her gone. That's the whole plan. Karen and Nick, they go off together and do white people stuff. Martin and Allison, until they leave, they're off too. We get back to New York, and I get my silence. Karen's not even looking. She's miserable, but she's in the 'I don't need no man' part of misery. She hates it, but she won't go look because she thinks it's a weakness. She's proud. Too proud. The dude, Kevin I think, dumped her. She says it was mutual, but she's lying. Needs that dude. But if he didn't need her, she can't need anyone, or he wins, so she's home, eating ice cream and doing stupid exercises with the TV to burn the ice cream, and I can't get anything done. Everyone's happy if I get my way!"

Floyd stopped to look imploringly at Magog, who nodded in genial agreement.

Okut of Khartoum opened the door and walked in. Through the cloud, he looked at the two in the tub before focusing on Magog with furious disbelief.

"What are you doing?" Okut demanded.

Magog met his gaze and exhaled a huge cloud of smoke through his nose.

"Skiing," he said and gave Floyd the spliff.

"So there are other black people in Australia," said Floyd.

Okut looked at him. "What?"

"You're the only other brother I've seen since I got here."

Okut couldn't be bothered to reply. "Come," he demanded of Magog.

The huge slav turned to Floyd and shrugged before crawling out of the tub. He offered the artist a hand, but Floyd declined. Magog and Okut walked out, stuffing the towels under the door from the other side.

Floyd sat and finished the joint, flushing the roach. Then he took out a pocket pad and mechanical pencil, and sketched Magog. Five quick lines and the brutal essence, the ruthless power of the near giant was confined to the paper. Above all Magog was power with sharp hands to either grasp or slash. He stood like he was pushing back against Sisyphus's boulder. Floyd flipped a page and drew Okut, leaner, faster, hands tattooed a thousand colors of fire that burned up the wrist and forearm from the hearthstones of his knuckles. Fires on his hands cast false outlines.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	6. Chapter 6

6

Jun Kim, born Busan, South Korea, 1962, died- later.

He'd taken up smoking around age 12, shanked someone at 15, managed to get out on bond, immediately ran away to Honduras and became El Darko, because Hondurans pay as little attention to their stereotypes as everyone else. Is he spanish? Is he white? No? Must be black. 

I was back in my room. Hotel management had very politely broken up the party, and Allison hadn't given me a number. She said she'd call me later, but insisted she had to do something. She might have meant it as a 'don't call me, I'll call you.' Either way, I had to do some reading and the important target, Mustermann, still hadn't come out of the woodwork. I went back to the files on Kim.

Somewhere in Central America, we couldn't identify where, before the late nineties, we couldn't identify when, Kim had been exposed to and initiated in a Colombian witchcraft cult based in El Salvador. His stock and trade had been curses. He'd been very good at them. 

In what was becoming a trend, I observed there weren't a lot of good reasons to specialize in curses. Curse doctors don't make many friends. While it is possible to use curses for good, it's a bit like smoking crack for weight loss. 

Kim's affiliate, the Madre Oscura, had a longer file than Kim, so I paged through it. We knew it existed at least as early as 1724. That's when four men had been hanged, beheaded, and burned for witchcraft in Peru, bearing tattooes of a woman in dark robes on their backs. Two more, this time a man and a woman, had been executed for being horrible people when locals had burst in on their hut to find a boy crying in a mound of dead bodies. Cannibalism had been involved. They'd been hanged as well but somehow survived. The man escaped, the woman getting shot while trying. He'd fled north, and IE hadn't had any watchers north of Columbia. Madre Oscura had vanished from our records until the shift of 1910.

When the Great Adjustment happened during the spring of 1909 to fall of 1910, the ley lines of South America had all gone fallow and those of North America increased twelvefold in power. IE had moved north with them, but it had been a half-assed, argumentative move. We never officially left, and half our offices remained in Argentina until the fifties. During the middle years, distracted by the fracases of Europe, IE had noticed Madre Oscura, and they'd noticed us right back. They ran south across the border, and we hadn't dealt with each other for another seventy years.

In 2006 Madre Oscura declared they owned South America and ordered IE out. We told them to self-procreate. Someone slapped an Immolant Vitae curse on our office in Argentina a week later. IE wasn't located there any more, but the subsequent tenants, an astronomy school, all died badly. Kim was Madre Oscura's primary hexologist, so he got priority assigned to him while IE officially forgave and forgot.

Kim fled to the Netherlands, Holy Justice territory, and took a job in a shipyard. Holy Justice and IE have been at war since they kicked our asses out of Europe in the sixteen hundreds, and in a shipyard with cold iron all around, keeping a low profile, Kim should have been safe. Even if Holy Justice knew who he was, which they probably didn't because remaining ignorant of goings-on in the 'Colonies' was a point of pride to them, he'd be near impossible to find or follow. Of course, he'd been prioritized by IEOTA, and IEOTA had passed his contract on to the Rooster. 

The Rooster allegedly dropped an oil tanker engine on him. An engine certainly had fallen on him. The Rooster hadn't been there at the time, having been in a Miami pet store, on camera, playing with puppies. (Subsequent covert interviews with the pet shop workers, idle conversation with both IE agents and Holy Justice retributors, had independently confirmed the Rooster's presence. Apparently he really liked dogs.) Kim's security badge was found underneath the diesel engine with plentiful DNA, Kim's favorite brand of cigarettes, a local driver's license, and two letters addressed to him (utility bill and parking ticket). There were no fingerprints or dental records for the obvious reasons. It was a very tragic accident, resulting in one additional injury, a janitor had fallen backwards over a mop when the engine fell and severely sprained his wrist. He'd taken two days sick leave. After that Vlissingen had changed their rules on how engines are stored in a frankly pointless reactionary measure. If the Rooster allegedly wanted an engine to fall on you, an engine was demonstrably going to fall on you.

The Rooster had been paid in full. IEOTA wanted to know if I wanted them to take his money away. 

No. No, I didn't want to take the Rooster's money away. I wanted to get paid, but I wasn't crazy about it. I wasn't scared of the Rooster. No one's scared of the Rooster. He's a professional. Of course accidents do happen, and I find all accidents that happen to me tragic. The Rooster would have nothing to do with it. He'd be feeding wombats. 

The reason why Kim was in the original file at all was that during the nineties, he'd been present in Australia, specifically the Alice Springs, Uluru/Ayer's Rock area. Yet again, there aren't a whole lot of good reasons to be anywhere near Uluru. Things go bad here. Mistakes are fatal, and there's never any good reason why. We have no reason to believe there's conscious agency behind it, much less malice, but errors tend to be catastrophic, and the odds are against you. 

Australia itself is a dry area. Just north is the Asiatic Blight, thousands of miles of magical nothingness. From about Vietnam to Indonesia, everything's running fallow and has been since before the Great Adjustment. Sumatra, Java, Borneo, it's all quiet. Peaking in Nepal and running strong down the Indian subcontinent, the ley lines dive when they hit the Indochinese Peninsula and Sri Lanka. There might be magical energy down there, but if so it's a hundred kilometers underground. The factions of India and China never moved south, and most of Australia's been low since the Great Adjustment. To our purposes, Australia is part of South America. The ley lines run thick as thieves between them, but for a century those thieves have taken oaths of poverty. 

Kim, by then known as a curse practitioner, had spent time outside Uluru. The official stance was good riddance. Curses are dangerous, vile activities in the best circumstances, and curse practitioners don't practice long. If he wanted to hie off to the worst place to do so, that was better for the rest of us. As such his listing was brief, made no mention of his tragic accident of Vlissingen, and and I only recalled it because it's unusual for witch-doctors to practice in the Outback at all.

And I hadn't done any reading at all before acting. Because Uluru? Possibly. I made faces in my mirror and second guessed myself, because the worst thing in the world is to do something wrong and get the right outcome. You know what that meant?

I was going to have to do work.

During prep I requested a survey of local artifice, in depth, with allowances for files of more than five hundred pages. I got a pamphlet. The locals were unaffiliated with any of the major sects or factions, mostly unaffiliated with each other, and largely operated either in lily white regimes like crop benediction or meaningless regimes such as picking lotto numbers. It made sense. An agricultural benediction gone horribly wrong has things like drought as a worst case scenario. We were in the desert. They'd manage. I looked up the win histories on the big jackpots in the lottery. They were low to bad. 

Four hours ticked by as I delved into my reading. The bathroom was a sauna, with poisonous frogs climbing through amazonian palms in the shower. I bugged a librarian at IE until she grudgingly admitted she had access to one of Bell's Apparatuses. Then I completely violated our laws of propriety by insisting she answer when I call. I didn't think she'd ever forgive me. IE's research librarians are par excellence, but they're all rooting for this accursed 'electricity' fad to pass soon. I waved my priority one orders like a cudgel until the woman I spoke to, Helen Carter of the Immaculate Eye's Hall of Eternal Memory, promised she'd give me a directed compendium on Kim, Madre Oscura, Uluru, and Erica Mustermann. I intimated she might even fax it to me. Let's not get crazy and mention the "e" word.

Helen Carter knew where this was going. Why didn't I just go out and plunge all civilization into chaos?

"Magnificent Master of the Librarian Arts, Glorious Paragon of the Legible Word, Lore-Keeper of Wisdom, I need this by tomorrow. Frogs aren't that big," I told her. "What can you do for me?"

She sniffed. Carter loved disdaining flattery. "You're not my problem."

"Yeah, I got a priority one case that says I am."

She sneered, but I couldn't see her.

"I'll Transcribe it to you."

"Ma'am, the thoroughness of HEM's research is a wonder to the occult world, but I can't copy several hundred pages of notes down from a mirror. I need the unparalleled completeness of an HEM concordance, but I'm going to need a physical copy...unless you want to send it to me electronically."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" she scoffed.

"Well-" I said, and she cut me off.

"I'll contract a messenger!" she snapped, almost yelling. 

I was about to say something about the conjurer in TA that used the anaconda, but she hung up. I shrugged. HEM really was top-notch. Their Luddite tendencies aside, if Carter said she'd put together a full package for me, it would be miles beyond anything IE Research would do, and she'd get it to me by tomorrow.

It was impossible to return to work. I had some copy to read about the local history, most going back two or three thousand years, but after reading the same paragraph four times I found myself staring at the wall, wondering what kind of paint they used. Steam boiled out of the bathroom door, streaking in fractals. It dried in a randomized pattern instead of inverted. I got up, clicked through the channels once, and went out for a walk.

Only the Empire's bottom three floors were occupied. The elevator buttons for four and above wouldn't light up, but only a bit of tape blocked the stairs so I trotted up to the fourth. The rooms were closed and locked, little flower holders unused beneath the security cameras, peepholes for the proletariat, and every light fixture was bare. It was just a row of emergency lights and brass stems. The fifth was similar, but the sixth had no doors. The rooms were bare, walls still taped from painting, and outlets without covers. The toilets were dry. 

The seventh floor needed more work to both be habitable and access. The stairways were blocked off with security doors, so I climbed the bricks. Dead bugs were everywhere. I hate bugs. A steel skeleton underneath the plastic skin wrapped the building, which was itself all plastic and steel. There was no wood, even in the walls. Exposed wiring snaked under the floors, sticking outlet heads free with network cables tasting air. Someone had stacked several pallets of carpet in the middle of the cutting floor and wrapped them in more Tyvek. Someone else had stuck little notes to the bundles, reading things like, "So happy we got this carpet before the floors are done. Thanks, Management!" 

The eighth floor was a semantic argument, as eighth story walls existed but the floor didn't. A cocoon of more plastic wrapped sealed the top. I climbed up among the cranes and found that they'd retracted their arms and beams, and even these were covered. The top of the crane cabin was crunchy. I resigned myself to seeing something disgusting and panned around with my flashlight. There were more dead bugs everywhere. Nothing moved, so with a little teeth gritting I made myself examine them. They looked like grasshoppers. That was a little weird, but I'm no entomologist. Maybe grasshoppers thrive in the desert. 

The elevator shaft stuck above the rest, also shrouded in plastic wrap, and I stuck my head in to see how it worked without cables. Maglev rails were installed in the walls, and far below a carriage was doing its job. I could see the elevator riding up and down. That was awesome. The maglev rails were like a ladder, so I clambered down and stepped onto the elevator to poke around. Between the coils and transformer cluster there was a Farmer of Fire, the Desolation, written in blood. 

I stared for a good thirty seconds, sat down on a halon tank and stared for another thirty seconds. I lit it up with my flashlight, waited, and lit it up again. Then I lit it up with my phone, because I don't know, maybe my other flashlight was delusional. I sniffed it. I got down on my face and inspected it under the radiant excess of the LEDs in the lifting system, just in case all of my electronics caused hallucinations. I almost licked it before realizing how stupid licking strange blood in an elevator was. The connections traced back from the left side rail, going up, to the right side rail, going down, and they made a slight jump between elevator and rail. That meant this was a continuous broken connection, which is our slang for a giant pipe of power designed to stably arc thousands of points of power across a floating gap. I went back and stared at the Desolation.

Blood turns brown when it dries. You know what I'm talking about. Everyone's seen old blood on a favorite shirt or something, and it's a grungy shade of brown. This was bright red, but there was no lightning arcing through the elevator shaft, I could tell by not being dead, so this pattern had been activated with enough power in it to remain fresh long afterwards. Desolation didn't remain fresh for long. It was Desolation. That's just not what it did.

Let me step back a bit. The type of magic I do, rune magic, is the best and most powerful of all magic, and people who disagree with me are wrong. It relies on a bunch of runes, and each them does stuff. When writing a spell, they're connected to each other, and you put some power in one end where it hits the first rune, which uses the power to do something, and then passes on to the next rune which uses whatever the first rune gave it to do its own thing. This clicks right along until you get to the end, whereupon whatever's been done leaps free of the spell, what we call the construct, to unleash itself upon the world. 

The process takes a while. Depending on the complexity, a long while. You rack spells, constructs, so you can write them earlier and carry them around almost fully built. I've been using Subtle Messenger for years, so I've got that one down to a science. I can write it in about five minutes but keep it racked anyway. Ghost Step should take the same, but I've used it all of once now. After taking out Kim it took me two hours to rerack. There's a coterge outside Zermatt that's been writing something for two hundred years. They won't tell IE what it is, and no one has been able to sneak in and look at it to find out. But racked, even the Zermatt Monstrosity could be cast in a short time. That thing, probably a day or so, but Subtle Messenger and Ghost Step are on the order of a few seconds. 

You can't allow a racked construct any power at all because of the first property of magic, magic wants to act. The runes want to do stuff. You give them a bit of power, and they're off. Pragmatically, that means the construct will cast itself as soon as it gets the slightest bit of tailwind, and once started, there's no stopping it. Kim ran into this problem to his immolant demise. So what you do is leave out the critical connections that let the construct pass energy, the lynchpins. A construct without those lynchpins is like a grenade with the pin in. Things can go wrong, but if something goes so wrong as to set the construct off unpinned, you already were destined for a bad day.

Desolation is one of the forbidden sub-constructs. The Farmer is a primary Producer, and it's used all the time. The Farmer farms. You feed the Farmer something, say Water, and the Farmer will extract what he can from the water. So if you want fog, but for whatever reason, you want the fog from a particular tank of water, you put Water single connected into the Farmer, and write the construct on your tank of water. It's very benign. Fire's equally innocuous. Write Fire on a candle wick, put a bit of power into it, and boom, now you don't need matches. That's how magicians light cigarettes without lighters. It looks badass. 

That all changes when you double connect Fire to the Farmer. Now whatever goes in takes a loop between Fire and Farmer, until the Farmer reaps ash. He takes whatever he can get, Desolates it, and passes the ruin on. The Farmer's a friendly rune, very helpful. Fire's a useful rune, one of the best. But the Farmer of Fire, to reap Desolation, to burn something to its components and pass only ruin...

I shook my head.

There just aren't a whole lot of good reasons to do that. Not on a pipe big enough-

I looked up at the translucent plastic wrap across the open mouth of the shaft. Through it gleamed the stars, the fat oval of the moon, almost full.

It took me back before my initiation, to my time as a physics student poking around the planetarium. Stop me if the science gets too much for you, but the other planets are big. Really big. They're so big they act like pseudo-runes in their own right, powerful enough to drive astrology. We use them because sometimes you need to put a ton of power into something, an inordinate amount of power, some nonsensical reservoir of arcane energy that would shatter sapphires, melt rubies, and corrode diamonds into paste. 

Diamonds are expensive, but the planets are up there, waiting, open for anyone to use. 

Someone built the Desolation on a pipe that could run stably as a continuous broken connection and aimed the pipe right at the sky. They did the whole thing in blood. 

I scampered back up the elevator shaft, finding no additional magic. That made sense if the Desolation was written to take everything from a planet it could. I could call a science buddy and figure out which one. The Desolation passed that power down the elevator shaft to something, probably a Lord of some sort I mused, which did something else. The rest of the construct should be down there.

I want to make a point. None of this was necessarily evil. Maybe there's a great reason to write Desolation in blood on an elevator shaft. Outside Uluru, where everything seems to go wrong in the worst possible manner. Where Dr Kim lived, one of the world's preeminent curse practitioners, who should have been dead already. While Mustermann put out through the rumor mill that she could raise the dead. There could be good, happy, friendly reasons for all of this.

Of course, I don't work for a law enforcement agency. I work for a faction of territorial magicians who Tragic Accident people. I didn't need probable cause or due process. I needed a target.

I needed to get underneath the elevator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	7. Chapter 7

7

At the top of the shaft I paused to second guess the unknown magus. The Desolation was uncovered. There were no Phantasms to conceal the malicious working. If the pipe was written to feed, trying to conceal it via another construct would just feed the illusion to the Desolation anyway and while perhaps adding an illusion wouldn't make it worse, it couldn't make anything anything better. But it was just hanging out there: Desolation. Someone had written that. 

But they didn't need to make it complicated. Why not just write it and leave? Even if someone saw it, the runes were just weird red markings to the uninitiated. Wrap the shaft against bugs and move on. 

My head refused to accept it. That should be buried in darkest secrecy. 

I wormed out of the elevator shaft, squirming around on concrete so I didn't rip any tape. Once out I patted everything down and dusted my trail with loose concrete dust. Confident I had left no tracks, I got up, and the Spider kicked the wind out of me.

Great googly moogly, that hurt. 

Did you know a good kicker actually can knock a human being airborne? I didn't. His shin caught me at the bottom of the sternum and drove through my body, wrapping my torso and legs around it cellophane on a stick. I hit butt first, rolled, and smashed against a wall. The world was white stars and pain. There was no air. I tried to moan but couldn't, my lungs sucking for air. The confused signals wracked my body. I gasped again. The Spider grabbed me by the head, lifted me like a puppet, and kicked. He really threw his hip into it, counter-torquing with his stray arm, the one holding me, to maximize delta V. He kicked me through a wall. I got stuck halfway through gypsum board, butt hanging in the air behind.

"I call that my mage-killing kick," the Spider said as he walked over. He was a lean guy, south-east asian of some sort. Wandering stars obscured the details, but he sounded like a friendly chap. 

"You wizards need to speak to cast, right? That's how it was explained to me. Can't do that with no air."

He stutter-stepped like Fred Astaire, got his hip sideways, and kicked me the rest of the way through the wall. His heel broke my jaw and knocked me out for a split second. I woke up on my back with a smell of alcohol. The Spider was reading the bottle.

"Apply to cloth," he said out loud, over enunciating the words. He spoke English much better than he read it, so he had to do the hooked-on-phonics thing. "Apply cloth to victim's airway. Do not breath."

He glanced down. "I guess that applies to me, not you. You're going to breath it. Don't worry. You've got better than fifty-fifty odds of surviving. Sixty-forty. Maybe even seventy-thirty, but we wouldn't want to take out the element of chance, right?"

My lungs broke some barrier and gasped, pulling air, and I coughed and gurgled. I panic-breathed. The Spider knelt and covered my face with a cloth, and I tried to overrule my traitorous lungs. They were having none of my shenanigans. They needed air now, and they got phthenalyne. 

 

 

Of course, you could also just post a guard. If randos come poking around, the Desolation is just weird markings. Randos climbing for fun won't pay attention to it. People do that. Climb buildings for fun. People are weird. But if they climb around and spend too much time looking at the runes, then they're probably mages. It's self selection. Someone climbing buildings for fun won't take photos of a rune structure in an elevator shaft instead of over a drop. Not unless they're a magus. Not wizards, wizards are something different. That's a little offensive. 

I woke up naked, tied to a stone altar, and the Mantis paid the Spider ten bucks. 

This place was nowhere good. A vaulted ceiling of red limestone loomed above. Many rows of red and white columns ran between the ceiling and floor, spaced a foot apart and vertically demarcated by three catwalks, iron things of unusual complexity. There were all these little pipes and wires in them. Only the central sacrificial space was open, the rest being a hexagonal comb that marched away in every direction, lit by blinking LEDs.

They were server racks. Bajillions of them. Ten meter racks for vertical cooling. They must be hot racks, and that sounded familiar. 

Sometime during my return to cognition the Spider hit the intercom, saying, "He's awake."

"I'm coming."

"Yes, boss."

We waited. I had my server-related epiphany coupled with a headache-based awakening. Obvious things started trickling in, delayed by splitting pain. I think my body was limiting my senses so the sudden onslaught of cranial pain didn't overwhelm me, but that meant I didn't really know what was going on. 

The Spider asked, "How long do you think?"

"Driving or walking?"

"Why would she walk from the BC Center?"

"Just BC. The C is Center."

The Spider looked at him. "Oh, excuse me. Show me on the doll where the BC Center touched you."

The Mantis was unmoved. "You're saying it wrong."

They lapsed into hostile silence. 

A few minutes later an elevator hissed somewhere back in the silicone forrest. The Serpent arrived, observed me, and walked past to the others.

The Serpent wore a black suit with black gloves, white shirt, and a brilliant yellow tie. It formed a perfect bullseye of contrast with the suit and his black skin. He was lean as the Spider, but taller and lankier, and walked with short, flowing steps.

The Spider was wearing heavy-weight sweat pants, a tank top, and sweat band. He was a little guy, Thai, with tight wrapping over his ankles instead of socks. The wrapping went up to his knees, and was mirrored on his elbows to wrists, where it hid under gloves. It was some form of canvas.

The Mantis probably outweighed both of them combined. He was tall as the Serpent, legs thicker than the Spider's torso, and he had no neck, just a high-water mark on his head where his shoulders hadn't gotten to yet. He was hugely muscled, but he wasn't terribly well defined and carried a big gut. He wore a tracksuit, double vertical stripes on each side, with a jacket laying on his leg and just a sleeveless athletic shirt on his toso. There was too much grease in his hair.

"Welcome," said the Spider to the Serpent. "You came quick."

"I was in the main building already, otherwise I would have had to walk. There are too many bugs to drive." The Serpent's head glided sideways to look at the Spider, turning first from the temple and following with his face at an angle. When the Serpent's eyes found their target, his jaw kept moving while his cranium didn't, straightening his face to stop. 

"They come like clockwork," agreed the Spider.

"Merely God telling us to stop," said the Mantis.

The other two looked at him.

"Do not be worried by trivialities," he said. 

No one else commented. The Serpent dropped a cloth on a footstool and sat down, and all three waited. 

I realized that I couldn't talk. My mouth and lips were immobilized with a combination of plastic and gauze, and there was a fake airway running down my throat. The thought of it made me gag, and I forced myself to think elsewhere. My head hurt too much to look quickly, but no one stopped me from looking around slowly. 

I thought about being naked, strapped to an altar. My immediate environs on the altar were covered in sigils of blood, and my manacles were bolted deep into the stone. This was really good work. It was bracketed off, blocked and confined by Drummer and Trumpeter, so that nothing would get out. Someone had put a lot of time into it. You could put this whole human-sacrifice construct in the midst of another construct, and nothing would cross contaminate. 

Nigh impossible, I thought and realized I was scared. I couldn't do it. Not this complex. Not on stone instead of iron. 

The elevator hissed again. Without a word the Spider put a folding chair by the altar, and Erica walked out of the columade. She was a big woman. She wasn't fat, but she was tall and broad shouldered with neck-length blonde hair tucked behind her ears. Her hair was blonder than her eyebrows. In one hand she held an 100 cm three-ring binder and in the other a cheap coffee cup; "Golden Gay Breakfast Blend." It smelled like instant. She put the coffee on the altar with me, and sat down to start paging through binder.

She found her page, drank her coffee, and leaned over me. "We're going to remove the mouth guard. When the airway comes out, you may gag. Try not to vomit, because if you aspirate it, you will die. That would be mildly inconvenient to us, but perhaps somewhat worse for you."

"I broke his jaw," warned the Spider as he got ready.

She looked at him, me, and shook her head while shrugging, unable to discern why she should pretend to care. 

"It could impinge on his airway," the Spider explained.

She looked at me. "Good luck," she said and indicated the Spider should proceed.

The Spider pulled out the oropharyngeal airway, and that was not a happy time. I drooled a bit, which he wiped off. Erica was seated again, paging through her binder.

"Doctor Martin Wilson, PhD in Solid State Physics, the useless kind of doctor. Undergraduate at Idgaf U, Masters as part of doctoral program at University of Washington, dissertation on modelling carbon doped silicon. Mr Wilson, that's just stupid. You picked a stupid topic for your dissertation. Dissertation question, "Does carbon doping provide enhanced properties to silicon np junctions?" Answer: No. You spent eighty thousand dollars on that. Eighty thousand dollars, Mr Wilson. I see why you became a magician. Science is not for you."

She took a copy of my dissertation out of her binder and leafed through it. Dr Woznia's questions were noted down in red. Dr Woznia had been an SOB who'd thought every PhD he granted was one he lost, and he fought me every step of the way. Erica disliked that I labelled my y-axes left to right instead of vertically. 

"It doesn't make it easier to read. Your labels should be the same direction as the axis. As it is, they look like labels for the charts, which leads to confusion."

She sipped her coffee. It smelled like bad spices. 

"Currently carrying seventy eight thousand, nine hundred, fifteen dollars, four cents in student loans."

She put the binder down and picked up the backpack I'd hidden under my bed. She took out the IE priority advance, flicked her fingers through the billfolds and counted ninety eight thousand dollars. She removed two thousand and threw the rest to the three amigos seated nearby.

"Launder it and distribute it among yourselves. Be careful, IE can track their bills. Seventy eight thousand, nine hundred, fifteen dollars, four cents, Mr Wilson. If your loan holder compounds interest once a month, you should be losing about 12 dollars a day. On carbon-doped silicon. You spent money on that."

Ms Mustermann sipped her coffee again, putting it down on the runes beside me. The cup landed right across two of the major circles, and she caught my glance.

For a moment we made eye contact. Erica smiled. 

"Try it," she invited.

I didn't move. She held my gaze with cruel intensity, a sudden glimpse of predatory interest. There was a tiny spillover of coffee, and if allowed to dry, it would form rings on the sacrificial runes. The acid in the coffee might even dissolve the lines. Erica smiled again, and deep banked fires kissed the windows of her eyes. 

"Try it," she whispered.

I didn't.

She returned to her efficient reading of my file.

"Recruited by the Immaculate Eye Research branch. The luddites needed someone who knew what an electron was. Initiated through the trials at Inaccessible Isle. You managed to find an employer willing to directly pay you to go away. What were your trials like? Did they give you a mirror for humility? You were passably efficient, succeeding with competence in the absence of brilliance, achieving "meets expectations" on all fronts. Congratulations. You got the lowest ranking possible without your boss having to justify firing you. You must be very proud."

Erica paged through my life. She knew everything. She knew I was born in Spokane. She knew I was an only child and the circumstances around my parents' deaths. "Cancer. Why didn't you go into medicine and do something about it?" She knew I lived outside Denver. She knew my neighbors. She knew their dogs. "It seems at last you found some female willing to give you attention. The slightest bit of attention turns into an obsession with you."

She shut the binder, finished her coffee, and negligently put the cup down, breaking the first and third major confinement rings. Those were the ones that prevented me from sorcering my way out of here. She turned and faced me.

"Now, Mr Wilson, you're naked, alone, and afraid. This being the way your sexual experiences likely conclude, you should know the feeling. However those may be infrequent enough that you're not precisely sure what happens next, so I'll tell you what I want to save us the awkward bumbling. Tell me everything you know about Prometheus."

I couldn't say anything because my mouth was broken. I tried to give her a sorry-about-that expression. Darn shame. 

She hit me with the Will. 

That is fucking horrifying. We carry a lot of preconceptions around with us, one of them being that we're special in our own right. We might be able to persuade others, and fools can be persuaded by other fools, but no fool is going to persuade us. We know what we're about. No matter what the merit or seeming significance of choice, we can always make our own choices. Even if we're suckered, we make our own choices.

The Will respectfully disagrees.

The Will cared not for free will. Erica slammed into my mind and made my decisions for me. She overwrote my past, and my existing decisions rewrote themselves around Erica's. When my history conflicted with what Erica decided, my history changed. I altered my memories to fit her new narrative. I accepted old faults in my premises to justify her intentions, and I kept right on doing it until she wasn't making my decisions any more. When I decided what I wanted her way, she wasn't forcing me. If I just surrendered my mind would stay intact.

I agreed with her. I was dropping my defenses, lowering the patterns I keep up just in case of such an attack to let her evaluate the dictates of my mind when the elevator hissed again, and the shooting started.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	8. Chapter 8

8

Two bullets zipped over my head and cascaded through the racks, shattering and bouncing. My feet were pointed to the elevator and Erica was at my side, so she wasn't immediately in the line of fire. She wasted no time getting further from it. Another round skipped off the ground underneath me, and some yelling kicked up from the three amigos. The shooter put some more suppressing fire over my head, charged up, and rounded the table so I could see who it was.

It was the stripper. Our time together had been brief, but she knew I needed her. We had formed a bond. 

"Oh, for heaven's sakes," Allison muttered, then yelled, "Where's Nick!?"

Elsewhere, my hearing was still plugged into Erica's voice. I was having a hard time disassociating our perceptions, and she hadn't put attention into deliberately breaking out connection. The next moment Allison yelled at my captors, and I heard her twice in unsynced two-channel sound. 

"I don't know or care!" replied Erica.

"He's been kidnapped!" Allison yelled back.

"Maybe he left you for someone with fewer wrinkles?" 

Allison fired off some constructive criticism.

I struggled and tried to examine the locks. They were old, several hundred years old at least, but well oiled and maintained. On the one hand I could pick these in my sleep, because I got arrested a lot as a teenager, but on the other hand I didn't have another hand, because I was manacled down to an altar. I imposed on Allison's attention to look for the key. Things get dropped in moments of excitement.

She scowled at me but took her stabilizing hand off the firearm to palm the lock. She wrapped her whole fist around it, shifting and twitching with her fingers at the base, palm over key-hole, and I was about to tell her how to pick it when the thing clicked open on its own. I was confused but wasted no time. She reached for my other hand, but I jimmied it with my fingers before she could reach. I moved down my body unclasping myself.

"I got her," whispered the Spider, duplicated through many off channels of my hearing.

"Don't."

"But I got her; she's close-"

"If you charge and she shoots, either you'll die or she'll miss. If she misses, the bullets will go wild among my seven million dollar racks. Let her take the idiot and go. Unless they get stupid."

I had not paused to listen and flicked open the last of the bars on my feet. I rolled off the table and ran back the way she'd come. 

I had some jokes here but, you know, broken mouth. I ran for the elevator. 

She followed, and once within I knocked ceiling panels loose to find the hatch. It's always the last place you think to look, so the elevator needed a new ceiling. We were half a floor up when the carriage stopped.

Allison swarmed up the rail, and her feet were passing my head when she looked back. I hadn't moved. 

"What are you doing?"

I couldn't answer, so I waved at my face and panted. My lower jaw dangled sideways, pressing into my airway, and I'd been holding my breath since climbing off the altar. Now I had nothing left, my vision full of white spots and floaters, and I had to put a hand out to stay up. Climbing was beyond me. If I held the bones I could breath. It hurt, but not like you'd expect. Adrenaline.

"I can but not here," said Allison, thinking out loud. She looked down into the elevator. Whatever she saw made her decisions for her.

Allison grabbed me around the body with her gun hand and hoisted me sideways. I dangled off her hip. With one hand and her feet, she scrambling up the elevator shaft. I didn't help because I was trying to keep my mouth still. The shaft was probably two hundred feet of vertical, almost perfectly black with emergency lighting below and above. Parts of the rail acted as live wires, and off course there was the blood-channel to Desolation. Fun times. Around basement level there was a small, excavated maintenance region off the shaft, and she stopped there.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

I was not okay. I was turning blue and had stopped moving. I wasn't really aware of what was going on, but I tried not to be inconvenient. Something happened. She looked up and frowned, and looked down and frowned. Looking down took longer. There were some booms. We scuttled a few feet up the shaft, but she turned and scuttled back to the maintenance hole. Immobilizing my jaw let me breathe a little. It pushed the black stars away, but the white spots were replicating.

"Can you make it to a hospital?" she demanded.

I shook my head no.

Allison looked down again, and there were more booms. She looked agitated. "We have a slight problem. I'll-" but she stopped. I couldn't see her in the dark, but I could feel her looking at me, choosing her words. Whatever she had been about to say, she'd censored, judged too dangerous to explain. It was also probably exactly what I would be most interested in.

Oh, because Erica might be listening in! I hadn't thought about that. I didn't know how Allison might know about that. I had several questions for her but no time.

I heard the booms from below, peculiarly echoing both upwards and down. Erica must be coming. 

I tapped Allison until she had to look at me and signed, "Us trapped?"

She looked surprised. "Yes," she replied out loud.

I was weak and fumbling. My fingers felt stiff. Erica was coming from below. Holding my head let me take a few breaths, and the curtains pushed back. I had a few seconds, because it took both hands to breath. The Spider had been right. We do need to talk to cast magic, but there's a fairly obvious back-up plan.

My sign language is terrible, and I was in an elevator shaft with the- Ah, fuck it.

"Hold. Beware fire."

"What are you-" Allison screamed, but then there was fire.

I went fetal, yanking Allison down after me, and the Desolation called fire from the sky, the burning fist of an angry god that struck down the elevator shaft, shoving another car before it. It was white hot and furious red, the temperature of berserk hate. It was the feeling of venting rage on a worthy target. Whoever got hit by that deserved it. The cars collided, their artifice conflicted, and the roar and explosion surged the other way, racing upwards to the sky. Allison and I huddled under her bomb blanket while spiteful fury tried to get in.

Afterwards there were the usual noises, but they sounded so quiet. Everything was silent. Oh, no. 

"What did you do?" asked Allison.

"Fixed my face," I replied, out loud. I had had a full kit worked up: emergency healing, burst of speed, etc, and now it was all gone. My rack was gone. My kit had been immolated. Everything was gone, and all I'd used was "heal." Jebus. I looked up and down. 

"Now there's no ambush!" I added.

You can't actually see scorn. Besides, it was dark. Allison made noises but what they meant no one can say. She climbed away up the elevator shaft. I sighed, but the inscrutable ways of the magus have always been misunderstood. On the first floor I peeked out of shaft and saw a clear moment to sprint to the pool area. I wrapped myself in a towel and took the stairs up.

 

There was a weird hum in the stairway, but I ignored it. On the third floor I peeked first, saw Floyd and Karen walking towards their room, but no murderers or kidnappers. I trotted for my door, and they looked over. Neither immediately reacted, but then Floyd started laughing while Karen gave me a sympathetic expression. I didn't say anything. Instead I bustled to my door and discovered I was naked.

I had known that, but the implications of nudity, no pockets, had been lost on me. I didn't have my key card. I stared at my door, and then turned to the other two.

"Hey, guys, could I ask you a favor?" I said, smiling like a used car salesman.

Floyd laughed harder. 

Karen also started laughing, but at least she was helpful about it. They let me into their room.

"I'll just cut through," I murmured, heading to the balcony. Karen shushed him and ran to help me. Her kindness was overwhelming, and no doubt completely independent of the urge to let me keep both hands on my towel. Floyd came in, shut the door, and stopped, mouth open. He was thinking furiously. 

In a flash of inspiration, I realized Floyd didn't have any jokes ready. I was walking through, betowled, helped by Karen who he knew I liked, and he didn't have any jokes on tap. If I passed through quickly, not only would I be able to put on pants, but he'd have no heat. I moved with a purpose.

"Yeah...cause you're...your....face."

He was trying to force it. Karen got to the sliding glass door and opened the curtains onto darkness.

A roaring thunder of locusts beat against the glass. Once the blackout curtains were pulled aside, the noise hit us in full. We couldn't count them in the dark, but it didn't matter. They were beyond numbers. Every second hundreds slammed into the glass door, tried to land, and fell, either by their own weight or the weight of the swarm behind them. Uluru and the stars were gone, and even the street lights from the parking lot below were invisible. Like machinegun fire, locusts hit the glass.

"Oh, those bugs," I said.

"Save the drawing!" screamed Floyd and ran for the door.

"Leave the evil drawing!" I screamed at Floyd. 

Karen didn't scream due to indecisiveness over what to scream about.

Floyd dashed out and snatched up the charcoal drawing. I clocked him, threw him over my shoulder, and hauled him back in. The accursed drawing remained outside. Karen heaved the door shut behind us and sealed it, but not before some locusts swarmed the living room. I ran for the hallway door and realized I was trapped. 

"Okay, dude, you seriously need to take a sanity check, because you just punched me over a chalk sketch," said Floyd from the ground.

There was a knock on the door. The three of us froze, and then the knock repeated. Karen stood up, calmed herself, and answered. It was Chloe, the night desk attendant. 

"Hi! I'm sorry sorry to disturb you so late, but I wanted to ensure you have your doors and windows sealed," she said, a little out of breath. She had been running.

"Oh, it's all right. We were still awake. May I ask why?" Karen smiled at her.

"There's a swarm of locusts heading this way. That," she added, pointing at the sliding glass doors. "I see they've already gotten in." She smiled sweetly and didn't at all want to murder us. 

They were legion, and their blunt heads bounced against the door. Great black bodies that gleamed under the balcony lights flew in, swarming over the furnitured. Chairs sank into the swarm without moving. Chloe stepped urgently past us, checked the doors and windows, and then checked each of our rooms. She smiled the whole time. 

"Everything's fine!" she reported. "There aren't as many as it looks, so if you'll get pillowcases and start rounding them up-

"Ma'am," I said. I checked her nametag. "Miss Chloe."

"It's Mrs, actually."

"Mrs Chloe. Why is there a plague of locusts descending on us?"

"I think plague is a little strong, don't you?" replied Mrs Chloe.

The relentless drum of insects pounding on the glass rattled the heavy door in its rails.

"No, I'm going to stick to plague," I said.

"I respectfully disagree with your choice of words," she said. "However, the answer to your question is they escaped."

"Oh, good," muttered Karen.

Mrs Chloe looked at us like we were a bit excitable. "There is a modern renewable farm to the north of us. They're pursuing alternatives to high carbon footprint meat sources like cattle. They raise insects in large quantities because the meat is both nutritious and good for the planet. We all need to do our part."

Floyd sat up off the floor. "We haven't eaten any, have we?"

"No. They're not the menu yet. There are some logistics problems that prevent the farm from achieving a reliable supply."

Floyd lay back down. I moved away from Mrs Chloe to stare into the sea of darkness outside the glass doors. Right on the other side was the drawing of Karen and I in sanguine chalk. I couldn't see it through the locusts. 

"And all the pay-per-view movies will be free until this clears up, just to make your stay a bit more pleasant." Mrs Chloe told Karen. "Besides, you have access to all of the hotel's services come morning, so you don't have to go outside. The insects typically clear out within twenty four hours."

"Is the bar open?" asked Floyd.

"Unfortunately, we can't serve alcohol after midnight. However each room does have it's own minibar."

"Yeah, that's not going to do it." Floyd muttered.

"Sir, you seem to misunderstand me. Housekeeping will resupply your room's minibar, provided you are not present when they come."

"Oh, I see," said Floyd. He opened his eyes wide and nodded.

Mrs Chloe nodded suggestively towards the small fridge.

"Ma'am, I smoke cigarettes," I said which could sort of be considered true over a long enough timeline. "Clearly I'm concerned about going outside. What are my options?"

"You know they don't bite, of course? They're just large grasshoppers," said Mrs Chloe, but I persisted. "There's a smoking lounge on the roof as well as one on the ground floor. Due to ventilation requirements, there is no smoking in the building, nor within twenty five meters of a door. However, there is an enclosed external walkway between the south entrance on the first floor and a smoking area. The roof smoking area is not enclosed."

"Thank you very much." I smiled at her.

Mrs Chloe smiled at me. Karen smiled at us both. Mrs Chloe smiled back. Floyd found a fifth of rye in the minibar, because Empire Resorts did not screw around. The night attendant left.

"We got vodka. We got rum. We got saki. We got something pink that smells like sorority girls and bad decisions," said Floyd. He read a card inset on the fridge door. "'See wine selection above sink.' Karen. Martin. Oh, damn."

I walked over to the window and looked out. There was no driving in that. It was like a fog. Chloe hadn't been at the desk when I asked for Mustermann, so they didn't know where I was. Oh, but I'd arrived with Floyd and Karen. I needed to escape. I really needed clothes. I couldn't pick a key-card lock with my fingers. 

I was just completely screwed. Absolutely, totally, immeasurably borked. No good would come of this. I sat down and surrendered my destiny to the world.

"Sorry I punched you in the face," I said to Floyd. "Can I make you a drink as apology?"

Karen ran past us, snatching grasshoppers from the air, and shoving them into a plastic bag.

"You get one free," said Floyd.

"I respect that. I'll still make you a drink if you want."

"You don't get another punch."

"That's only reasonable."

Karen, having scooped the strays up and thrown them away, looked at us like we were martians. "Are you serious? Floyd, he just punched you in the face!"

"You punch people in the face all the time!"

"Professionally!" yelled Karen.

We didn't have any bitters, and our vermouth selection was sub par. Unfortunate. I found some Tom Collins mix, and addressed the gin selection. The Empire made up for lost points here. 

"But you don't get upset about it!" shouted Floyd at Karen.

"I get super upset about it! I go into the ring trying to kill the other girl!"

"Hey, can I have your attention for a moment? Floyd, drink this. Karen, here."

They looked at me.

"This is the deal. I'm a magician from a secret order of magicians that rules North America. I'm pretty sure there are assassins on their way to kill me right now. I'm naked. Even if I could get into my room, I got nothing. We're probably going to die, and there's no escape because God inflicted a plague of locusts on us all." I raised my glass. "Cheers."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	9. Chapter 9

9

"Err, what?" asked Karen.

"My rack's gone. Not just everything I have prepped, but the rack itself. I can't go back through the rituals. I'm fucked."

"Are you the Illuminati?" asked Floyd, very entertained.

I answered him as if he meant it. "No. I don't think they exist. We don't really rule North America, at least not the non-magical parts of it. We're like a drug cartel, only with librarians hired from the Washington Post."

"Do some magic," said Floyd.

"Can't. My rack got wiped. Either Mustermann torched it when she invaded or I burned it when I Cleansed. Either way, I've got nothing on tap. I don't even have my rack up. I'm done. Done."

"See?" Floyd asked Karen. "See? They can never prove it."

"Jack proved it," argued Karen.

"Jack didn't prove jack."

"Eleventy billion nine hundred and two?" asked Karen, craning her neck sideways while she stared at him in scorn. 

"That doesn't prove anything," grumbled Floyd.

Karen shot him a look of pure matronizing tolerance and turned to me. "I believe you, sweetie. We're on a mission from God."

"She is," muttered Floyd.

"The who and the what now?" I inquired.

"God," repeated Karen. "We're on a mission from God."

There was a long silence.

"Hey!" I exclaimed. "I understand it sounds implausible, but there's no reason to-"

"Oh no, Martin. We're not making fun of you. I'm very serious." She put her hand on my arm, and her fingertips were cold from holding the glass. Her palm was warm. "We're on a mission from God."

"She is," repeated Floyd.

"Last I saw you, you were getting high in a bathtub, and you were trying to bed a lawyer," I said, pointing at them in turn.

Floyd shrugged, and Karen said, "No," in a weird, indecisive tone.

"He ran off," added Floyd.

"Oh, sorry. Allison mentioned that. He's been kidnapped."

"Allison?" asked Karen.

"Stripper T-Rex. She rescued me when I got kidnapped. Came in guns-a-blazing, and said Nick's been kidnapped. There was a mix-up."

"Aw," purred Karen, pleased. "But she's not a stripper. She didn't strip."

"Karen, you don't learn to dance like that without being a stripper."

"Yes, you do! I told you, we have a pole fitness class at work. It's a great workout, and it's a healthy way to feel good about yourself!" she snapped back.

"Who teaches is?" asked Floyd, sipping his drink.

Karen opened her mouth to answer and paused.

"Is she, or was she ever, a stripper?" Floyd asked.

"Thank you Senator McCarthy, but you're being a turd."

"We're getting off topic," I asserted, breaking in. "What are you talking about, 'you're on a mission from God?'"

"Literally exactly that. We have been given orders, from God, via-" She paused and looked to Floyd. "-an angel?"

"Jack. We got orders from a guy named Jack. We have no proof God is involved," said Floyd. 

I massaged my temples and sipped my drink. It had been made to soften the blow of my imminent mortality. It did fine now. "Please, just explain it like I have no idea what you're talking about."

"We're on a mission from God," said Karen, as if that said everything. 

 

 

"You know what the best part about being dead is? Cigarettes.

"Seriously, I love these things. If I didn't have to worry about dying, I would have been a four pack a day smoker. I've never understood the people who think there's a cancer cure, and someone's just hiding it. Do you realize how much I'd smoke if I didn't have worry about cancer? I'd have three cigarettes going at a time, with a pipe in my teeth. I'd be stuffing asbestos in the filters. Asbestos filters would probably give you more than cancer though. You'd get super cancer. Hyper cancer. Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, start, select: cancer. Don't care any more. I'm dead."

True to his word, Jack was smoking like he was making up for lost time. He had that look of joy children get at Christmas. 

"Anyway, the deep questions. I'll try to hit the main ones, but I didn't pay attention to a bunch of them, so bear with me. You remember in high school you'd hear something in class and it would make sense, and you'd think 'I'll remember that!' and not write it down, and you never did? I did that with God. Yeah, I know. I'm a dumbass.

"First, yes, there is a God. You meet him, he explains everything, it makes sense. It's great. It's satisfying. The answers work. He doesn't judge you, but you do get judged. You judge yourself. That's what I meant when I said I'm good enough. I didn't get sent to the basement, but really, if you're going to the basement, you're already there.

"Ever hear that old story about the kid whose family gets murdered, he gets murdered, real bad, etc, and he gets to heaven and finds out the murderer is in heaven via deathbed conversion? The punchline of the story is wouldn't heaven suck if you had to share it with your murderer? That's sort of the test.

"You see, if that happened and you're the kind of person to get pissed off, you'd be pissed off. You'd be pissed off forever, and you'd be stuck in in. But if you're the kind of person that forgives, could even forgive that, than you're the kind of person who can accept forgiveness. When everything you've done is laid out before you, if you can forgive it in someone else, you'll accept it when God forgives you for it. Then you're happy forever. See, God doesn't blame people. That's not what he does.

"Second, God. Oh, yes. He explains everything. He does, but God really gets into the explanations. He doesn't just explain it. He lets you know with his mind. You think with the mind of God, feel with his heart, all that. You understand the world as he does, and that's how it all makes sense. You can't just be like, Becky's a bitch, why does she suck? God's in your headspace, or more accurately, you're in his, and you're like, oh, that's why Becky sucks. And if you're the kind of person who forgives, you forgive, and she doesn't suck any more, and if you're not, it's on you.

"That's why heaven is all on you. Because it's your choices. I can't explain it exactly, sorry, but it's on you. You are what you decide, but free will doesn't give you freedom from consequences. It can't. Free will and consequences are the same thing. Without consequences, you haven't really made any decisions, so the consequences of life are the life after. But the thing is free will is also an element of uncertainty, and so once you've experienced the mind of God, when you not only know everything but understand it, you can't make decisions any more. You've made them. And that's why you're stuck in the basement if you put yourself in the basement. Even kids, I never understood how kids could die, but it makes sense because they get it. And it works out. I wish I could explain it."

He was sucking down smoke as fast as he could light them, and after the first he wasn't using lighters. It was butt to tip. He floated six feet above the rug, burning his little cancer sticks like he came back for revenge. When one went out, he tossed it unerring out the window. Sometimes it looked like he missed as he threw them into the wall but caught the drafts that pulled the heat out and the heating bill up. Each butt tumbled into space and onto the hard concrete of the yard.

"Right, so I was good enough to escape the basement, but I wasn't really good enough for the front door. There's a middle ground, and that's when you make it to dinner and see the bad people and you just completely shut down. I didn't handle it. I didn't get it. See, my choices didn't prep me for that. You've got infinite time for it, and your choices are already made, so God comes in and you think your way through it. See, I was one of those people who was trying. I kinda sucked, but I knew it, and I was working at it, but then I got smoked by a bus. I asked God about that. He said yes, being good is hard. 

"People tell you it's easy. You just choose the right thing. They're wrong. Being good is hard. You've got to do the right thing, and know yourself to know when what you think the right thing is is really you thinking the right thing is right for you. It's tricky. I was really upset. God was like, yes, it's hard. But you were getting better.

"You want to know why deathbed conversions aren't really an issue? People get wrapped up in them. They're not really a thing. See, being good is hard. Kindness to your fellow man and all that? Not easy. So if you've got a lifetime of being a dick when you die, you're probably not really going to undo all that in a split second. You might say some good shit, like I'm sorry for being a dick and all, but you're not suddenly a good person. Now if you are, good on you, but it's hard.

"Anyway, God was like, you're a dick, but you're getting better, but you're dead. It made sense. I was like, I'm sorry. He was like, I understand. He's God, right? He understands. Anyway, he explained everything and I got it, but I wasn't really paying attention, so I can't tell you all about it now. But you're going to ask anyway, so God is love and be nice to people."

Karen had emerged from her bedroom with a hula hoop, and she passed it over and around Jack as he hovered in mid air. Floyd was ripping the carpet off the floor, muttering about magnets. They had a smoking apartment, but the management might not be properly prepared for Jack-levels of smoking. If he'd come back from the dead with a grudge, it was against unburned cigarettes.

"Free will. That's the thing. Ever wonder how your decisions can be intended to matter if you don't know everything? That's backwards. Your decisions matter because you don't know everything. Once you know everything, even briefly, you don't have free will any more. You're stuck with your consequences.

"So I'm dead, and I'm not quite ready for heaven or hell, and God says, I got this thing I need you to do, so I say sure, because he's God, right? God sends me back here, and he's like, get to work, but you can smoke. I love these things. That's where you guys come in.

"This is the deal. I can't fix stuff. Not permanently. I learned everything even if I forgot it, so my free will is willed. I did it. I made my choices. But that means I'm stuck with my consequences and my actions don't have new consequences. For example, I can't kill anyone. When God explained that I was like boo, then I was like yay, because you're not supposed to kill people! But I can't. I don't mean I'm not allowed to, I mean I can't. If I stabbed someone, they'd survive. If I shot someone, the bullet would misfire. That's the deal. That's where you come in.

"You two aren't dead, so you've got free will. Your actions still have consequences, so you can fix stuff. Make it all work. The only thing I can do that you can't is kill demons, because they're infinite too. Not infinitely powerful, they exist in infinite time, which makes sense if you're God. Now you could shank one and kill its guise, because when they come into the world they make a choice and they're confined by that consequence. You can kill the guise. But you can't kill the demon itself, which I can. Vice versa, I can't kill the guise, as that's a consequence. Demons are real, but they're not what you think. They can't override free will. They can talk to you, but you can decide not to listen, and then it's not like a drone on a bus, they actually can't talk to you any more. But they're really good at making people listen to their guises. That's what it's called. A guise."

"Who calls it a guise?" Floyd demanded, finding his voice. Karen was still looping Jack with the hula hoop. She just couldn't believe it.

"I do."

"So they don't call it a guise, you call it a guise."

"It's called a guise."

"Why?"

"Because I call it a guise!"

"But you're not they!"

"Of the two of us, which one's met God, eh?" yelled Jack.

"We're not convinced about that," muttered Floyd. He looked irritably at the floor.

"Seven, four, eleventy billion nine hundred and two," Jack snapped at him. "Green!" he said to Karen, and she dropped the hula hoop.

"You know everything?" asked Floyd, awestruck.

"Sort of. Say you had an instant to look at a painting. You'd remember the parts you were interested in. So if there're naked ladies, you'd remember them. But you might not remember the brushstrokes in a tree, or the number of cows. Now imagine you're looking at all time. You're looking at everything, forward and back, and you're only looking at it for a finite part of eternity. By math, that time asymptotes to zero, so you forget almost everything except the parts you're interested in. I'm kinda of ego-centric, so I remembered all the parts that have to do with me, specifically my job, because this was while God was telling me what to do. So I know about that."

Floyd looked at Karen. She was slack-jawed. 

"I didn't think green was your favorite color?" he asked. 

"It isn't," she said.

"Oh. Hmm. Maybe." 

Jack waited. He sat, floated, and smoked. 

"What did God tell you to do?" Floyd asked.

"Stop Karesh Ni."

"Who? Where?"

"Bad guy. Australia."

"You want us to go to Australia?" asked Karen.

"Ayup."

"When?" she continued.

"Now?" Jack suggested. 

Floyd blinked and scowled. Karen tried to keep her face impassive. 

"I want another number. What am I thinking now?" demanded Floyd.

"You only get one miracle. After that you need faith. Christian, remember? God's big on faith. Maybe I'm big on faith. Either way, you don't get another. You have to chose of your own free will, so the consequences stick. But, you know, you did think of a number before, and you even tried to trick me with that eleventy billion bit."

"I'm an atheist," said Floyd.

"Yeah, you can actually do that, and it works, but then how am I floating in your living room saying things like eleventy billion?"

"You're trying to convert me?"

"No. I'm trying to make you decide to go to Australia and save the world. Like I said, atheism works. It's about how God is everything. God is love. Everything is love. It's a lot simpler than I'm making it out to be."

"I don't believe that," demanded Floyd.

"That's fine. It works, if you're saying it because you believe it. But if you're saying that as a refusal of someone else's belief, if you're saying it to attack them, not yourself, then it doesn't work."

Floyd looked vaguely upset, not the least because he seemed to be generally unable to figure out how Jack was floating.

"Look, I'm not attacking you. It works if you do it that way," said Jack. He was so wrapped up in personal epiphany, he could hardly see out, but he knew that. "But I think I'm here talking to you because I'm working on something. So I think you're working on something. Look, I'm not trying to be a dick about this. I'm not attacking atheism. It works. But to me, it's about you. Are you sure about it?"

And that was the question Floyd had problems with. Floyd wanted to argue atheism, but Jack kept agreeing to it. Jack wanted to talk about Floyd, and Floyd wasn't ready to talk about Floyd. Floyd wasn't sure.

"For the sake of argument, let's move on," said Karen. She was just starting to recover the pieces of her mind. "I can't go to Australia. I have to work."

"Oh, yeah! That's why I'm here. Listen, it's not people in Australia. Well, there are people in Australia. But there are demons in Australia, so I'm here to help you out a little. That's what I did pay attention to! I focused on the things I had to do, my job, so you three could go."

Karen squinted like she didn't follow. "But I still have to work."

"No, you don't. When your manager hired you, he miskeyed your info. You've only been getting a quarter of your vacation time. You know how all your coworkers seem to have more vacation than you? Well, they do. Your job thought they fixed this a year ago, and they stopped looking. Tell your boss you're in the system as a five two instead of a five eight. You'll get three weeks vacation and a raise if you promise not to sue. It's not your boss's fault. He'll feel really bad about it. Might even buy you plane tickets to Australia."

Karen blinked at him. "By might-"

"He will buy you plane tickets to Australia." Jack nodded emphatically.

"What about me?" asked Floyd.

"You don't have a job, so I'm not going to get you one." Jack shrugged apologetically. "But you can get life experiences! Travel to Australia and do stuff. Think of the exposure!"

Floyd suggested where Jack expose himself and to whom. 

"If you're omniscient and all, or were, wouldn't you be more help if you travelled to Australia with us?" Karen asked.

Jack sighed. "Consequences. When I was alive I lived in the US, and I had some chances to travel but didn't. Now I can't go."

"You're seriously telling us you're back from the dead, on a mission from God, to tell us to go to Australia and save the world?" Karen demanded, like she wasn't really aware of the past fifteen minutes of conversation. 

"Ayup," agreed Jack and lit another cigarette.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	10. Chapter 10

10

Over the course of their story I'd imposed on Floyd for sweats. Karen finished speaking, sitting on the counter, legs crossed, head back, and the little artist nodded along unwillingly. He ran his hand over his shiny head. I looked between them, trying to figure out if they were putting me on.

There was a knock at the door. Karen shushed us, and opened it. She did so with her shoulders rounded up and forward, weight spread over her feet. Her back was tense and she formed a fist with her off-hand, but then relaxed and stepped aside so the visitor could enter. Over her head the lights in the hallway were flickering.

Allison appeared.

She looked so normal. She had on jeans, running shoes, that little jacket and blouse pair, nothing in her hands but a tiny purse. Standing in the doorway, she was effortlessly casual, but her eyes flicked around the room, searching. Her feet and hands were tensed still. 

She looked at me, them, and back to me with a short, demanding shake of her head. All she said was, "So, if you're ready..."

"Ready for what?" I asked.

She looked at me, leaning forward to hear something. 

"Thank you?" I guessed. "I mean, yes, thank you."

"You're welcome," she replied, equally non-plussed. "So, shall we?"

I looked around. "What? Here?"

"What here?" she demanded.

Karen and Floyd looked at us like we were crazy. Allison looked at me like I was insulting her. 

What did she want me to say? "What?"

"Shall we go?" she finally asked like that last word was costly.

"Get it, son," suggested Floyd.

The boxer turned and flushed, and tried to look like she wasn't paying attention at all. She also looked ravenously curious. Floyd was grinning like an idiot. 

This was just not the right time for that! Even though, yeah, I was going to die in ten minutes, so if I was going to ever again this would be the right time...so...

"Excuse me," said a quiet, deep voice from the doorway. Karen recognized him from the sauna. I knew him as the Mantis. His name was Magog the Destroyer, and he blocked the doorway, shoulders beyond the width of the frame. 

"I need that one," he said, pointing at me.

There were four of us, and one Mantis. 

"Why?" asked Karen.

"My boss would like to speak with him."

"Why are we still here?" hissed Allison to me. "What game are you playing?"

"What are you talking about?" I hissed back.

"Now, sir," said the Mantis, and Karen took two steps.

Those steps put her right across the entryway, a shallow corridor between the kitchenette and coat closet. Three crystal light hangings threw shadows between them, bouncing off stone walls that had been polished to mirrors. The finishings were granite and marble, and the grains in the stone fought the reflections. Karen blocked the other end of the hallway.

"We respectfully decline," said Karen.

The Mantis looked her up and down once, and then smiled. He stretched.

"I must insist."

Allison shot the bastard, and everyone jumped. Everyone but the Mantis jumped. The Mantis tumbled backwards into a wall. 

"So can we go!?" yelled Allison at me.

Allison was carrying probably fifty pounds of gun. I didn't know what that thing was. It was like a bazooka and an assault rifle engaged in firearm BDSM, magazines shoved into stray orifices and optics shoving out others. She was forearm deep in the thing. While all of us were clutching our ears and wincing, she kept yelling.

"Would you just change so we can go!?"

The Spider came flying over the Mantis's body and kneed Karen in the face. She went down. Allison tried to shoot him, but he was preemptively dodging, hitting the door to Floyd's room and taking it off its hinges. A turbine in her gun started spooling up as bullets shattered the walls. Floyd and I leaped for cover.

Karen flickered out and back into consciousness so fast she was awake before she hit the ground. She dropped and rolled, and got up as the glass door to the balcony smashed, unleashing the locusts. The Serpent wound in. Allison shifted fire, but then the Spider charged her. Karen dropped her hip and nearly took his head off but he was faster than expected and her fist caught his chest. The Serpent moved horribly, legs giving false impressions as his torso bent. Bullets tracked across a wall as the turbing whined. She shifted back, but he was too close. He poked her with one finger, and Allison went down.

"Guts and nuts," I muttered and threw an ottoman at the slithery fuck.

The Serpent destroyed the ottoman on contact. Mind you, his fists and feet didn't. It was his head. The poofy little footstool caught him on the shoulder, rolled into his head, and exploded in metal fragments and stuffing. Bits of spring cut through the walls. He turned to strike, and then I was in the bar.

 

 

Floyd was with me. He had one arm around my waist, other hand holding a piece of paper, and he started to babble something about it worked.

In that moment I ran out of bad words. I goggled. A bunch of confused people were looking at us from the bar.

"Oh my God!" gasped Floyd. "Oh my...oh crap." He stumbled away and winced. 

"What was that? The rapture?" I blinked. "There's more drinking than I expected."

"Miracles, son! Faith!" and he punched me in the arm.

The bar patrons were still looking at us. They looked less confused than I felt, because they were hammered.

"As the magician, I really feel like I should know what's going on," I said to Floyd.

Something distant exploded.

"You know what this is?" asked Floyd. "This is bullshit. This is a catch twenty two. That smoker got me. Either I forsake all of this power, or I admit he's right. But if I forsake all this power, I'm dead! It's bullshit! It's like people who say you'll find out what's right after you die. Maybe so, but it's a fat lot of good it does you then!"

Floyd was bouncing back and forth between two extremes of something, and I had no idea what he was talking about. 

I walked over to him with forced slowness so I didn't kill him and grabbed him by the shoulders. "Floyd. Are we dead?"

"What? Oh, rapture, no. That wasn't rapture. Nah, we're in the bar."

That made sense. I knew that. We were obviously in a bar, but maybe heaven had a bar. 

"What bar?"

"The one in the Empire. The Yellow Sign."

"We're still in the Empire!?" I yelled.

"Well, yeah!" he said, like I was the incoherent one. "That's what I had a drawing of!"

"Come, Floyd," I said and hustled out.

I was walking casually, meaning my flight didn't involve screaming. I ducked out the main doors and saw the desk area to the right. The windows beyond were black with locusts, roaring as they beat against the glass. Behind the desk was the terrible Mrs Chloe. She didn't look like she noticed us. The other way was a long hallway, the pool a few doors down on the same side as the bar, and the other side had a gift shop and tour information. Beyond that was an exit to the smoking area. This was the ground floor so that smoking area should be enclosed. I trotted to the window, saw that it was, and stepped outside.

"Hey, why were they drinking?" asked Floyd. "I thought there was no drinking."

"Not relevant. What do you mean, you had a picture of the bar?"

"Oh. I can traverse time and space. If I sketch something, I have the power to step into it and be there or speak to the person drawn. Sometimes both. Jack gave it to me."

He was just- He had neglected to- He was throwing that out there like- Deep breath.

"I see. We are safe for the moment. No one is here. Use your chalk. Get us someplace far away from everything. Like Canada." I smiled my friendly smile.

"There are some lovely places in Canada," he argued.

"Floyd. Hush. Sketch."

"What about them? The girls?"

"You said you can contact people? We go to Canada. It's a lovely place. You draw Karen. We bring her to Canada. You draw Allison. We bring her to Canada too. We form a hippy commune, because we'll all be in CANADA!"

"You are very tense," said Floyd.

 

We finally met some other guests in the hotel. A tourist couple from Nanking was polite enough to introduce themselves to us, but they didn't talk much. Both of them were pulling down cigarettes like the angel. Outside the locusts drew back from the vents, drawing some of the oppressive sense of presence off. It looked reasonable now, a swarm of insects and not ominous. The nice couple left, and Floyd started discretely rolling something. Another tourist joined us, and Floyd stopped.

The new arrival was a black guy with intricate tattoos of a sort I had seen before. They were webs of color over his hands, peeling back from the knuckles towards his rolled sleeves at the wrist, ribbons, sunbursts, and flames in red, green, and yellow. I've seen a lot of black men with tattooes, but it's hard for them to have vivid colors show up on dark skin. This guy was a painted mural. He was Okut of Khartoum, sometimes called the Serpent.

There was a sound like a detonation.

Floyd hadn't yet lit the joint, pausing with it in his mouth as we stared at the Serpent. The painted man pulled a bench before the pathway back to the hotel and blocked us in. Instead of killing us he sat down. 

"Err, what?" Floyd asked.

"Magog has seen fit to test your companion's skill," Okut replied. "They're doing it now."

"Doing what?" I asked.

"The test." Okut pursed his lips. "Your friend Karen has a grave problem."

Before either of us could reply, Okut continued. He spoke like he was thinking out loud, giving form to ideas. "Magog has weight, reach, and size on her. He hits harder, for the Mantis Style is designed to rend flesh. Boxing is not. She might be faster than he is, and from the way she walks, she might move better. It's difficult to say. But is that enough?" He thought for a bit. "Your friend Karen has a grave problem."

"What are you talking about?" demanded Floyd.

"Trying to predict the outcome. Foolish, probably. If we could predict the outcome, we wouldn't need to test it. But it is our nature. In the old days, your friend would have had a size advantage due to training. She's about half his mass, so she could survive at peak nutrition at a lower intake. Now that advantage has been overcome.

"That changed a lot of the old dynamics, every fighter being at peak nutrition all the time. You don't need to worry as much about momentary condition any more. Everyone's ready to go, and you don't find two masters, one half starved and the other fit. You'd think it would lead to the best technique, but it also lead to the rise of the hippo. Man-monsters at peak physicality that overcome training limitations. I'm always surprised how many techniques just don't work against someone with twice your mass. She could win, of course. There would be no test otherwise. But I wonder."

"Excuse me, but what are you talking about?" I demanded, now as Floyd nodded.

"The test," Okut replied. "Don't bother denying. Looking at Karen Williams and seeing a fighter isn't a test of skill. It's a test of vision. Look to the sky and see the sun."

"That guy is fighting Karen?" Floyd asked. The sky was black above, an impenetrable mass of locusts. 

"He is Magog the Destroyer. You should hope she wins or the locusts will dispose of your bodies." He bowed apologetically.

"Locusts don't eat meat," said Floyd in a small voice.

Okut blinked. 

"Yes," he said. "Of course not."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	11. Chapter 11

11

Smoking areas had to be fifty meters from building doors. Since the Empire had balconies on both sides, the smoke shack was located in the middle of a sparse field. There had been attempts at grass once. Between the shack and one of the building's side doors was a glass walkway, far simpler than the elegant concourse that linked the Empire Resort and the Empire Business Center. The shack was a glass pavilion with ornamental trees on the east side to conceal the smokers from the resort. I didn't give the trees better odds than the glass. The roar and thunder of the locusts were only tolerable because they stayed away from the smoke vents.

I was bitching at Floyd.

"Dude." I pointed at his sketch and made hurry up motions. 

"I'm working on it."

"Dude, you're screwing around. Stop screwing around."

"I'm working on it!"

"Dude! You knock people out in like a split second. Zip, zip, zip, and done. You've been working on that for like five minutes."

"Dude!" yelled Floyd. "I'm working! People are different! People are a sensation, an identity. Landscapes are harder. You've got to find the center and the bones of the earth."

"Fuck the bones of the earth! Just do Toronto!"

"What are you talking about with Toronto?" yelled Floyd, wild eyed. "I wasn't doing Toronto!"

 

"Wherever!"

"I've never even been to Toronto!"

"Forget Toronto! Wherever! Do a third world wasteland of ice and snow. Do Ottowa, a bear using a goose to scratch his balls, or Dog River. Do something!"

"Dude, I'm working on it!" screamed Floyd, and then he started shrieking at me. "What is wrong with you? You've been whining since we got here. You were whining about the smoke shack, you were whining about Karen, you were whining about my fixative. You were whining because I used hairspray! Now you're fucking complaining about Toronto!"

I startled and pulled back. "I'm not saying anything about Toronto. It was just the first name that popped into-"

"Fuck your head!"

"Why don't you two meditate on these things in silence?" suggested Okut from the other side of the shack.

"My head? Fuck you!" I yelled at him. "I was trying to talk to Karen and you were running interference for her. You wingmanned me into a T-Rex!"

"Are you serious! You're complaining because I introduced you to a girl you were about?"

"You were interfering!"

"You two cannot be having this conversation right now," whispered Okut, rubbing his temples.

"Karen's not even into you! Your whiny-"

"Why aren't you drawing?" I yelled, and waved at the sketch on his lap. It was incomplete and indistinct, a sweep of two lines that implied hills. "Finish your hills!"

He stopped. "What hills?"

"Those hills."

"Those aren't hills. That's a car hood."

"That!" I yelled, pointing at the hills.

"That's a car!" He smacked my hand away.

"You're screwing around drawing cars? We don't need a car! We need to be in Toronto!"

Floyd clocked me. He just hauled off and slugged me, right in the face. His fist hit right under my eye and knocked me back against wall. I lay there shocked.

"Don't you ever talk about my work again," hissed Floyd. His eyes were full of madness. "Don't you ever say anything about my work again. Don't ever talk to me again. You're only here because you want to plow Karen."

I could feel the winds rushing in and out. The air in the shack was still smoky, dense and pungent, and the outside air between the locusts was fresh. The two formed separate currents that fought past each other. This wasn't a screen, but a clear wall, some kind of plastic, held up by plastic bolts and separated from the metal posts by long ventilation slits. They provided air, but the plastic bolts weren't strong. My fall had broken two. 

On the other side of Floyd was another plastic wall.

I charged and hit him with my shoulder, a mad running tackle that smashed through the walls. We rolled and behind us the locust plague flooded the smoke shack. Now they beat against my skin, crawling over me, landing everywhere. They chirped and crunched when I moved. I dragged Floyd upright, partially hysterical, and ran across the barren field with my eyes closed. I took turns at random. We could have hit anything, come right back where we started, but we hit the parking lot.

Floyd stopped us, forcing me to stand still. I was shaking and twitching. I didn't dare open my eyes, but that made my sense of touch stronger. I could feel them on me. There were bugs on my eyelids. I wiped them off. Their little legs hooked on my eyelashes and brows. I made a safe place with my fingers and stared at the calluses on my hands, so close they brushed my eyelids.

Floyd started tapping around with his feet until he found the curb. Then he crouched down and felt the dirt in the curb. After that he got up, grabbed me by the upper arm, and walked confidently left, taking measured strides. We trotted along until coming to a corner, where he turned to follow the outside of the parking lot again. There was another corner, and this time he stopped, making sure his angle was perfect. He took a blind bearing across the barren dirt and pulled me after him. 

His sense of direction was impeccable. Once he knew where he was, he trotted unerringly across the ground without attempting to use his eyes. First we hit a power box, a low bump only knee high in loose dirt and rock. He turned and soon we hit a road, followed it until by the difference in texture between asphalt and paint he found a crosswalk. From that landmark he followed a walking path, left it at the inward bend of a curve, and found another parking lot. We crossed it and went through a door. He brushed himself off, and seeing me half catatonic, cleaned me off as well. I was twitching.

We were in Dr Kim's lair.

"Only place I could think of," Floyd explained. "Don't know where Kim is. I haven't seen him in a bit."

I didn't move outside of twitching.

"Hey, are you all right?" Floyd asked. "I'm sorry about punching you and all. I didn't realize what you were doing."

I kept twitching.

"Dude?"

"Are there any bugs on me?" I whispered.

"What? No I-" He stopped and looked at me. I still hadn't moved. I was frozen.

The little artist searched me meticulously. He didn't say a word. He removed every one, caught all the stray legs, and picked through my hair.

"No. They're all gone."

"Can they get in?"

"No."

My twitching got worse and worse until suddenly I exploded in full body spasming. I fell over screaming and convulsing, and was over it almost instantly as I ran my hands over myself.

"You, ah, you don't like bugs?" suggested Floyd.

I stared at him as my tremors subsided. "No."

"Are you okay now?" he asked.

"Not really."

"Oh." Floyd nodded a few times. "Anyway, like I said, sorry about punching you. I only figured it out just now. You couldn't explain of course, so you picked on my art which you knew would get a reaction out of me. It makes sense. You wanted to distract Okut, right?"

I stared at him. "Yes."

Something about my voice bothered him. He squinted at me. "Are you sure?"

"Of course. Distract Okut so he didn't see where we were going. You're too calm, so there must be a weak-spot. Attack the weak spot, get reaction, distract Okut."

"Why do you sound weird?"

"Because I'm suppressing an aneurysm."

"Oh. Oh! Are you, like, phobic or something?"

"Little bit," I said quietly.

"Oh, so running outside into the bugs must have been bad for you. You must have had to work yourself up to that one."

"Floyd, we're not talking about that any more."

"I'm just-"

"Floyd, I will kill you."

He waved me off with a shrug and started poking around. I sat down on the radiator-still and let my shakes dwindle. After a while I felt a need to defend myself.

"I'm getting better, you know. Remember in your room with Karen? There just weren't so many of them then. I'm okay if I have a wall between us."

"Okay." Floyd accepted that with a nod. "Outside was pretty bad."

"Yeah."

"In other news, we're in Kim's place. You were asking about him earlier. Did you ever meet him?"

"No," I said. 

"Right. Well, this that witchdoctor's place. I've got good news and bad news. Good news is it's much better built than I thought. It looks sloppy, but nothing's getting in the walls."

"What's the bad news?"

"The walls are dumpsters. There's a couple of them, old construction dumpsters, and Kim built the walls up around them. They're roofed over, but I found a secret doorway under the one on the left."

"And what's in there?" I asked.

"Mountain of kangaroo corpses. Their heads have all been chopped off."

"Oh, goodie."

"So, we should go," said Floyd, and I interrupted him.

"Nope."

"Dude, there's a mountain of headless kangaroo corpses."

"Don't care."

"Dude, it's super creepy."

"Not my problem."

"I think you're grossly underestimating how creepy this is," said Floyd and escorted me to the secret door. It was hidden underneath some carpet, and I'd missed it in my initial search. Come to think of it, there might still be a few of my frogs around. I'd look for them in a moment. First I followed the little black man through a small shaft and saw the corpses.

They had rope marks on the tail. Someone had chopped their heads off and hung them upside down to drain their blood. There were probably two hundred kangaroos down here. Interesting. The Desolation shaft only required five or ten, so somewhere around here there must be a ton of stray runes. 

"That's pretty creepy," I said to Floyd, trying to be agreeable. "Let's wait for the locust swarm to pass in the main room."

"You're still waiting here?" He couldn't believe me.

"I'm not going outside. If you want to, go right ahead. I wish you the best," I said, retreating back to the sunken filth of the main chamber. I started looking for frogs. Great little animals, frogs. 

"Dude," said Floyd.

Inspiration hit me, and I turned to him. "You want to see some magic?" I asked.

"What?"

"Magic. I can't do complex things because I lost my rack. I can't even set one up, because typically you work on long constructs in pieces and you rack the bits individually while you work on them. I suppose I could do a whole thing out longhand, but that requires a lot of work. But I know Subtle Messenger inside and out, and I can probably knock it out in five minutes or so."

"Subtle Messenger?"

"Summons poisonous frogs. I use them as messengers."

"I do want to see that," admitted Floyd. "Do you know other stuff too?"

"Ghost Step," I said and blinked. 

I blinked again.

I blinked so many times I felt like I was having a seizure.

"Is a bug on you?" asked Floyd.

"No," I replied before thinking about what he said, then nearly broke my neck checking myself over. "I'm good. I just had an idea."

Floyd raised an eyebrow.

"Sketch Karen and Allison. We can pull them to here. Ghost Step is one person, so it's no good. But I might be able to hear what Erica is doing. She might still be plugged in. She might have unplugged when I went loopy over the bugs, because that can come across, but it's more likely she just turned my volume down. If I listen really hard, I might be able to eavesdrop on her." 

Another wave of insight washed over me. "My God. If she turned the volume up on my entomophobia, I would freak out to the point I wouldn't even think of leaving though the swarm, so I wouldn't escape. Not if I had time to think about it. But if I did it without thinking-" 

I twitched three or four times, standing up straighter each time, as I put things together. 

"Which is exactly what happened!" I yelled.

"I caught none of that," said Floyd, smiling politely.

"Erica Mustermann is not a nice lady!" I yelled. "Sketch the girls!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	12. Chapter 12

12

Four lines and Karen, glorious and proud, lay splashed across Floyd's paper. She was facing the viewer, focused and competitive with her arms crossed. Her hair was in tight braids, and she wore workout clothing. The austerity of the sketch complimented her, leaving her face either madonnaesque or grim. Either way she was a dangerous warrior queen. When Floyd sprayed the charcoal drawing and put her down, I picked it up by the edges and stared for a while. Even the black and white complimented her.

"Oh, don't use the red chalk," I said absently.

"Hmm?" Floyd looked up.

"Not criticizing your art. I'm criticizing the chalk. It's actual curse chalk. You'll put the hoodoo on people with it." I didn't want to get hit in the face again.

"Oh, this again." Floyd snorted.

"Floyd, I'm a magician, and you're making trumps," I said, cutting off the cynicism before he could get started.

He opened his mouth to argue, waving the chalk at me like 'look at this gullible fool over here,' and stood mouthing words he didn't say, still waving the curse chalk at me. I felt like I was at a firing range, and someone was negligently flagging me with a loaded gun. I pushed his hand down.

"Martin, I respectfully disagree," he said but switched to black. 

I was about to give him some warning about Uluru, but he had paper on his lap, blinking at it. I paused. His hand twisted and slashed the paper.

Allison was complicated. She appeared almost twice in the same image, two women in the same stance, the same place, the same position, and yet one was overt and smiling, dead sexy and she knew it, while the other hung back behind. In blunt posture, her legs were together and she was bent at the waist, one hand reaching forward, and the other holding her mini purse behind. In one image she was leaning down to give you a stolen glance at her cleavage, and in the other she was standing up, having bent to offer a hand but now returning to conservatism. She smiled both seductively and hopefully, her hands either warm or friendly. It was hard to pick out the differences, because Floyd used so few lines. The outlines worked together into either shade or form, yet I couldn't figure out which one was which. 

I held her sketch next to Karen's and compared them. 

"I did talk badly about your work. Have I said you're really good?" I asked.

"Nah. Thanks."

"You are."

Floyd nodded and tried to invalidate the compliment. He didn't take them well when pressed. I put the sketches down and explained I needed silence and concentration. He understood. 

If Erica had left a link on me, it would remain until removed. There were constructs for doing that, but I didn't know any off the top of my head. That was the main job of IE's Hall of Eternal Memory. No one memorized all possible constructs necessary for work in the field. Okay, I'm sure someone has, but there's always that one guy. It's probably the Rooster. For us normal people, you can't memorize everything, so when you need something, you send a Subtle Messenger to HEM, and they reply pretty quick. It's important to know what can be done, because you can't search for it if you don't know it exists, but outside the constructs you use day in and day out, you just request them. I would need a package on purging mental influence and one for combat. I would need a combat package capable of being cast without a rack.

That would be a problem. I didn't know what combat constructs can be cast without a rack.

I pursed my lips and drummed on a piece of cardboard. Distractions. I counted boards in the wall until I was grounded, and then closed my eyes again.

First I had to move past worrying that if I didn't succeed, Floyd would make contact with the girls but Mustermann would know exactly where we were. Then they'd come right after us. That was the problem, and therefore I shouldn't worry about it because I was working on it. That's somewhat easier thought than undone. 

Past that in my headspace is, well, headspace. I've got memories I like, dislike, or obsess over uselessly. I've got far too much space devoted to frogs. There's a file of physics problems I'm still sort of working on, specifically some matrices regarding Kepler potentials that someday I'll solve and get my Nobel prize. Life will be grand. There are filing cabinets devoted to paying my bills. I was out of coffee. 

With tentative masochism I brought up some locusts and stared at them for a bit. I got creeped out hard, like how I used to when I was a kid. I knew what I was doing, so it was controlled, but that gut hit of fear reminded me of childhood. I dissected it as usual. I'd gotten scared of insects about the time my parents got sick, late high-school, so I'm sure a psychoanalyst would tell me I was displacing that fear. Every now and then I talk about my parents. I suppose it's healthy, but they're dead and I'm not sure what you want from me. People who take advantage of that are a bunch of bastards. 

That hit me with an emotional hook, and I rode it down to Erica. She was selling resurrection. Pay her some money and you get that last conversation, the chance to say things unsaid, maybe even time. It was a lie, though. It was always a lie. Anything someone sells you something you want that much is a lie. You never get anything you want so badly it's hunger. But sometimes you want it so badly you'll throw money at it knowing you won't get it, known insanity, intentional illogic. I'll get on my high-horse about that as soon as I stop- Nevermind. 

Emotion is a lense. I brought up Erica and felt about her, varyingly angry, bitter, grieved, and hopeful, felt my internal scorn for being hopeful, and felt about Erica. I thought about her words and the way she'd acted in the computer room. I thought about the sound of her voice, and peculiar doubled sensation when Allison had rescued me. I couldn't hear anything now outside the locust roar, but that's meaningless white noise. It filtered itself out. I listened harder and harder. 

She could have just dropped the connection and let me go, but she hadn't. I started hearing voices, words, and clicks over, above, under, behind the locusts. I have no idea how she did it. I tried to put a little power into the connection, but it missed. There was nothing there to power. So I stilled myself and listened, the gentle hard way, and her volume rose.

 

Someone, sounded like the Spider, was talking to someone else. "Son, you got knocked out!"

"She sucker punched me." The Serpent? His voice was weird.

"In the face?" Definitely the Spider. 

"Both of you, be silent," said Erica. Her voice sounded strange, deeper than before. Heard with her ears through her cheekbones, she sounded raspy. "Your competition will be the downfall of us all. Instead of functioning in unity, you three failed to develop any kind of synergy. Now look where we are?"

"We won. The dumb one's dead, and the boxer's right here," said the Spider.

"Which is unhelpful when we don't want the dumb one dead or the boxer at all. We want the magician!" 

"You want the magician," replied the Spider. He sounded like injured pride or stilted victory. He was deprived of his victory lap.

There was a weird sigh, an internal vibration. Would she be silently hissing?

"The Mantis?"

"Dead," said the Spider.

"We dumped him in a blow hole," affirmed the Serpent. Beyond a doubt he sounded weird. I thought he might have a broken jaw or at least some missing teeth.

"The dumb one?"

"In there with him. The 7:06 eruption will get rid of them both," said the Spider.

Some inscrutable noise. 

"What is that?" asked Erica.

It was Floyd. He'd started drumming. I snapped contacts and thought of locusts, fear-obsessed over them. Instantly I shuddered and for moments couldn't think of anything else. Erica was the furthest thing from my mind, and if she looked, she was about to get a head full of panic. That should keep her.

"Floyd! They've got Karen."

"Right. Allison first."

"Ah." I vacillated. "Allison may be-" but it was too late.

Floyd cradled Allison's drawing on his fingertips and put it on the ground to loom over it on hands and knees. He was almost exactly where Kim had died. Thinking of Kim I paused in the act of pulling him away. Floyd might not want to be interrupted, and we were close to Uluru. I did an agitated little dance. Floyd stared deeper into the sketch before reaching down, plunging his hand into the paper like a white pool, and reaching until-

"Got her!" and he pulled.

With a heave and a jerk he yanked a tiny, ninety year old woman out and dumped her on the carpet. She didn't move.

There was a moment of tense, hostile silence.

"Don't say anything," said Floyd, pointing at me. "Don't even open your mouth."

I refrained.

The woman on the floor was bent forward with age. Whispy hair formed a sweat-soaked halo, draped over thin skin which showed her veins. Her hands and elbows were tiny and gnarled, and there was blood on her lips. There was even a little leaking out of her eyes and ears. We couldn't the source of her injury, because she was wearing Allison's little denim jacket.

In fact, she was wearing exactly what Allison had. The only thing she was missing was the mini purse.

"Where did you get her?" I asked.

"Bottom of some kind of hole. The big guy was there too, but he didn't move."

"You're sure this is her?"

Floyd gave me crazy eyes.

"I'm just asking! I believe you. Could they have used age magic on her? Is that a thing?"

"You're the magician!"

"I don't do any of this!"

The blood on her mouth hadn't moved: no bubbles, no hint of respiration. I held the back of my hand to her lips, felt nothing, and checked one of her eyes. The eyeball hadn't rolled back, and the pupil didn't react to the sudden light. She had no pulse. I sat on my haunches.

"She's pretty dead," I said.

"Hey, Martin. Can other people send you Subtle Messengers?"

"Hmm? Oh, yes." I looked up. Floyd was having a stare-off with an otter, the latter belligerently holding a scroll tube. "Don't worry. That's mine."

Floyd gave me a look.

"Okay, no, it's not. It's one of the other desert-otter messengers," I snapped.

"Jeez, dude. Don't be so defensive."

I frowned at him. The otter trundled past in a hopping slither and delivered the scroll. I didn't know what to do, so I unrolled it and glanced down.

"Erica Mustermann is a German pseudonym, equivalent to the American 'Jane Doe,'" read the first line. "All of our records on the entity Erica Mustermann operating in the Australian Outback are tied to this pseudonym and therefore suspect." The next four paragraphs were disclaimers. 

I rubbed my face and lowered the scroll. Floyd watched the otter hop off, slipping into a crevice between some carpet and a broken pallet. The animal did not emerge from the other end. While I sat in mental blank space, Floyd started sketching otters, either carrying tubes in their cunning little paws or staring indignantly at the viewer. Who knows what would happen if he tried to contact a Subtle Messenger? That wouldn't be very subtle.

"Can you-" began Floyd.

"Takes a different set of lynchpins. Yes, but I don't know how off the top of my head," I called over my shoulder. 

"You use frogs?" he asked.

"Yep."

"'Cause they eat bugs?"

"Yep. I use poisonous ones, so no one messes with them when I send a message."

"Crafty."

"Thank you."

We were quiet.

"You know we're going to have to go after Karen?" Floyd asked.

"Let's party."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	13. Chapter 13

13

"What do we do with her?" asked Floyd, indicating the old lady who might have been Allison.

"I don't suppose you have any trumps of hospitals?"

"No. I can make one."

 

I stared at the corpse. Taking her to a hospital felt like the expected answer, but my gut said no. "I don't know how much can be done for her. There's a hematoma on the side of her neck, so her pipes are probably broken. But her heart's not beating, no breathing, no pulse, and there isn't that much leaked blood, so I think she stopped moving quickly."

"Can we leave her here?"

"I don't know what else to do?" It ended a question.

"I'm going," he decided and sketched. I told him I was going to wait here. In five chalk slashes he was gone, and I summoned a Subtle Messenger. 

Little frogprints were around from the last time I'd been here. I'm not sure if Floyd recognized them or put matters together, but he might have connected me to this place. Within a minute of him leaving I had Emily in and gone, my fastest time ever, and then I felt a peculiar sense of distance. It was like I was looking down a well.

"Eh?" I asked. 

"Dude."

"Oh. Hey."

"Yeah." I looked around, and saw Floyd. The artist was superimposed or double exposed over the broken walls of Kim's hutch. Floyd's little bald head with a donut of peach fuzz didn't float in space. It was well grounded on his shoulders, but those were ethereal. They didn't end in arms and chest, but faded pallets. Then he raised one and extended his hand. "Pull me through."

I grabbed, and boom, Floyd was there with me.

"You ever seen anything like that?"

"Nope," I admitted. He looked pleased. 

Emily returned and brought a few of her friends with her. I ran some water, and they entertained themselves. The spell had been left open, so they could putter around before vanishing. Most were hanging to the side of a cardboard box besides the murky pool, but a few scrambled in and out. Emily relinquished her scroll after being scratched with a bit of stick. HEM had replied with a quick jotting of Purge Influence, Conflagration, and Final Holocaust (HEM Note: Tricky). Purge Influence, the simplest one, was nine runes long. 

"Oh, mercy," I whispered and put them away. "Where did you take her?"

"Brooklyn."

I looked up at him. Floyd looked embarrassed. "There's a problem with old people being dumped at hospitals in New York. At some places they don't have cameras or watchmen, so they can't figure out where the deceased come from. I didn't want to be connected with her, so I went there."

I thought about the fact that was a problem. I didn't know what to say. Floyd looked equally nonplussed and guilty for having relied on it.

"I don't really want to start experimenting with any of this magic next to Uluru, so I may not be much good. Can you get us guns?"

He thought about it. "I can try," he said and sketched. 

Moments later I had some gigantic piece of insecurity-compensation with three handles. There were four magazines sticking out of the stupid thing. All it needed was a chainsaw. I looked at it like a dangerous snake, and regarded Floyd, who was carrying something that looked sane.

"Why do you get the normal gun?" I demanded.

"This is the Omnicider. I saw it in a video game, and it shoots shuriken and lightning," he replied.

"I stand corrected. Let's go."

 

Floyd held up the image of Karen and concentrated. I stood next to him, looking around nervously. Kim's hutch was a silent realm of crap and garbage. The walls still had holes in them, but within the piles were tarps I hadn't seen before. He must have been stealing electricity from somewhere to feed the lamps. Several small frogs watched us over a stack of broken chairs. Floyd seemed to be having problems, but he fought through them.

"I think she's naked," he said.

I craned my head over his shoulder.

The chalk sketch was moving, twisting in his hand. It was also perfectly still. Karen was moving, fighting against chains. She'd been tied down, strapped to the same altar, but it was just a connotation of sacrifice in Floyd's chalk. Runes Floyd couldn't have known burned with blue light in black chalk as she fought. Someone had muzzled her. Floyd was trying to get through to her, and she was looking at us, but her hands were tied down so she couldn't reach. Floyd couldn't put his hand through the paper without some effort on her end. 

I tried to tap into Erica again, but she was quiet.

Even my head was silenter than it had been in years now that the rack was gone. I felt the absence of it like cold wind piercing my shirt. I waited, listening, and held onto Floyd. 

 

"Now," Erica said in double, outside of Floyd's view.

The Spider shot around the edge of Floyd's vision and caught his reaching hand, the one he was pushing into the image with all his strength. The Spider snatched him through. The speed was unbelievable. He yanked Floyd out from under his gun, heels lunging through empty air while the Omnicider spun helplessly in place. I had no shot as Floyd vanished and the trump was pulled through itself. His gun clattered uselessly on the floor.

"Hello, Martin," whispered a thought not mine in the empty silence.

"Oh-" I gasped and whirled. I knew I wouldn't find her, but I looked anyway.

"Did you miss me?" she asked. "Do you look for me now that you're all alone?"

I refused to say anything. Instead I put the Compensator down, unrolled the scroll, and flipped to Purge Influence.

"You're going to try that?" she asked. "You're going to experiment with a new spell in the very shadow of Uluru? With me here, waiting to distract you at an opportune time?"

I held the scroll, frozen. 

"I'm not outside any more, Martin. I'm inside. You can't get away from me, because I'm already here."

I hit her with locust fear, and that hurt us both. There was an instant of peace. But I needed time. Several hours would be the best, and I had none. It took me thirty seconds to a minute to contact her, so I only had about that time. Maybe more, maybe less. 

Her voice was about to return. I had to hit her with something bad, something crippling. With a peculiar sense of detachment, I realized I could hit her with that. The event. But I didn't know if that would hurt anyone but me. That is a knife I think I can only turn against myself. So I was left with locusts, my parents, which I'd mostly displaced to the locusts anyway, and more locusts, mere consideration of which was worth less than a minute.

But like the subtle insinuation of temptation, I heard the locust swarm outside. Mere consideration wasn't enough.

"Hey, baby," I thought. "You with me?"

"I'm always with you," she thought back. She sounded cocky and smug. 

"Good. Good." My hand was on the ruined door. "I got a present for you."

"Old guilt, maybe?" she asked, purring.

"Nah," I said and walked out into the swarm, clutching tight to her memory.

When the terror hit, the unhinging fear, I embraced it. I welcomed it in and revelled in it. Once the locusts landed on me, when they crawled over my skin and their feet clutched my arm hair, pulled my lashes, adjusted my clothes, I thought about the unknown Erica. Immediately she tried to turn me down, but with the intensity of that panic as a lense, I turned myself right back up. 

My god, they were crawling on me. They were in my ears. They were trying to get into my mouth.

On the other end I could feel her fighting, trying to box our link up so I could be ignored. I wouldn't let her. I was too scared, I had too much fear, that it overcame me and rampaged through the open conduit of her will. With my mind behind it, fear ripped her open and when she threw herself into the fight, she started to resonate. Her own little terrors began to vibrate. The terrible sense of loneliness and abandonment began to hum with the absent horror of being an orphan to cancer, and then she bolted. She slammed the door and cut the ties. 

I felt them go. Her grip on me wasn't reduced, it was gone, obvious in absence. I asked if we wanted to completely freak out, maybe roll around and scream or something, but my head-people agreed we should just go back inside. We walked casually in, shut to door, and fed the locusts to the messengers.

By the way I tend to get a lot of non-poisonous frogs when I summon Emily. I also get a lot of poisonous frogs. The spell just summons collateral frogs. If you're wondering where all these frogs come from, that's where. 

If you're asking, "Yes, but where exactly do you summon them from?" then I've got nothing for you. Some things man was not meant to know. I meditated on it in silence. 

Yes, I was distracting myself. That was not a happy time. 

Purge Influence, nine runes long, the simplest of the three, should be redundant. I felt more than knew her hold on me was gone, but I needed to be sure. 

In a fading stew of old fear I put the construct together, checked it thrice to be sure, and cast it, thinking of Uluru. The construct executed without a hitch, leaving me alone in the silences. Outside the world still roared, but it sounded softer. The swarm was beginning to move on. Kim's hutch was vacant except for the frogs and a few hundred beheaded kangaroos.

 

Magog lay in a camouflet where the locusts did not go. The limestone walls were burned sulfurus yellow, and cracked and powdered. Bits of dirt and gravel formed a pile under the Mantis, and a little more had fallen around him. The vaguely circular cavity opened through scrub trees to a dry rill, and the few scavenging bushes by the opening were charred and dead. Two stumps, burned down to the root, poked over the mouth of the hole, and another scavenger, several meters back, had a rope tied around its base, the other end being a noose that lay kicked away from the hole. All the big plants were dead, but some little bushes and grasses with roots that didn't dig deep enough still lived. The insects and rodents went about their business unmolested so long as they avoided the hole.

An outline of an old woman lay half on Magog, half on the burned ground beside him, but she was gone. Only Magog remained. The Mantis didn't move, and the sky turned pink overhead. Dawn was coming.

Someone who didn't leave footprints appeared in the hole mouth, black robed, carrying a scythe. It licked its lips with a dry tongue. The figure stepped down from the edge to beside the body and poked him experimentally with the scythe butt. Magog didn't move. It poked him again, and this time jumped back. Gravel didn't kick up or skitter underfoot. The Mantis still didn't move.

Down here it was dark as midnight, and the air smelled of burned stone. Winds sucked air in and out of the hole's mouth, but the rocks gave of their stench. It smelled sulfurus, salty, and of burned blood. 

Death poked Magog again, really gouged him with the butt of the scythe. The spectre worked in near the kidneys until flipping Magog over, and the Mantis' blank eyes stared up. There was dirt on his eyeballs and stones in his lashes. Death took a double-handed grip, and smashed Magog right in the face, swinging the scythe like a sledgehammer. The Mantis jerked with impact and rolled back as he had been, face down. Death waited again, but dawn was coming. 

It licked its dry lips again and took two stealthy steps towards the corpse, one hand forward, scythe wide and back, ready. The hand edged beyond the cloak, skeletal but not skeleton, old flesh over older bones, thin, tired, fingers with dry, broken nails, and reaching for Mantis. The hand came within range. 

Magog snatched Death, caught the scythe, and smashed the spectre into dirt, breaking stone and bone. Dirt fell from his eyes like tears.

"You, of all, should be more patient," said Magog.

"Dawn is coming," croaked Death through a broken jaw, teeth hanging.

"Let it come. More of my kind die by day and fire than asleep at night."

"Ah, but to he whom all things collects and nothing keeps, your kind are the most transient of all."

"I expected better," sighed Magog. The Mantis claw still pinned Death down, grinding ribs against the stone. They were old and brittle bones. He took the scythe.

"I have waited for you," said Magog. "I've looked for you. I've hoped for your messages to reach me. I listened for your voice in the wind. I checked for you around every corner. Long have you hidden from me in weak enemies. Now, when we could have been together had you but a little patience, you rushed in the hollow moments of night after sunrise. I waited so long, and you failed me."

"If I hadn't waited for the hollow moment, you would be collected but not kept," replied Death. "Sometimes even I have to risk much to gain more."

Magog shook his head and stepped back, holding the scythe. Death fell into a puddle of black robes that were only shadow. 

The camouflet stank of sulfur.

Magog forced himself to tear until his eyes were free of gravel, and then used the scythe to climb out of the hole. The sun was past the horizon in the east, at its biggest. To the south a pillar of oily green flame broke free of the rangeland and stained the sky. Another matched it to the north. Another burst from the blowhole as Magog scurried to get clear. The fire stank. Magog stared at it and sighed.

"No patience," he thought. Uluru rose silently to the north east. The fighter jogged in that direction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	14. Chapter 14

14

Floyd and I had tried a fast rescue. That had worked like a tasty locust knocking on a spider's trap door. Now I had tried the slow way, purging influence, and I felt like I'd delayed too long. 

The swarm had moved on when I finished executing the construct. It was a shadow on the sky that blighted the south. The sun had just finished rising, and my internal clock was confused. So be it. Moving towards the rising tower Kim's hutch was at my back, and the desert before me. Far away to the right were the Kata Tjula, which looked like good hiking if the people trying to kill me stopped.

Writing constructs out long-hand is a hyper-detail-oriented task. It's like calculus, but you can't add the missing factors of pi in later. Having completed it without exploding, my head was clear, so I put a few factors into play for later.

First, I called Hank. "Hank, this is Martin. The guy with the-"

"I know who you are." Hank was not happy to hear from me.

"Right. I want to put you on retainer. I may need your services shortly."

"Use the app."

"This is an off-app thing."

"You mean like-"

"You know what I mean," I said.

"Oh."

I waited.

He asked, "How-"

"Very."

More waiting. 

"Moment of truth, Hank. If you've ever made yourself promises about what you'd do if opportunity came knocking, this is it. Speak now or get a Toyota."

"Let's not say things we might regret!" yelled Hank.

"I hear the automatics are great, and next thing you know, you'll have full autonomous cruise." 

He hissed. He was so close to the edge. Just a bit more.

"But cars are just appliances anyway, right?" I asked. "Toasters of the road?"

"Oooo," he whispered in soft voiced fury. "I know what you're doing. You aren't tricking me!"

"Is it working?"

A pause dragged out between us, but I was too cocky to get impatient. I waited.

He broke the silence. "I'll be around. Off-app."

"Good."

That man did not like me. I was okay with that.

Next I stopped in a convenience store and got a touristy backpack. It had a fuschia Ayer's Rock with a golden sunrise, "Your Outback Just Got Bigger!" in neon green. It was the biggest one they had. I grabbed sunscreen, bad sandwiches, and several first aid kits. Anything they had that looked useful went into the bag. They took American money at a ruinous exchange, but the jokes on them because it was all counterfeit. Outside the Compensator and Omnicider went into the bag. The Empire waited for me. 

I entered via the Empire Resort and Convention Center Business Center, BC for short. The doors were unlocked, and the halls vacant. My feet tapped on polished marble, real stone set with silver in place of mortar, and I crossed to the umbilical corridor.

The long glass hallway wasn't finished yet. Most of the glass was in, but some of the roof panels were missing. They would be transition panes, self changing tint to block the afternoon sun but let in the stars. Now they'd just let in the bugs. With nothing to eat in here the locusts hadn't been thick, but a few strays were hopping around. Those underfoot crunched. 

Sunbeams hit the windows and shot rainbows across the hallway. The edges of the antiglare treatment acted like prisms. 

The Serpent appeared in the far door when I was only moments from the resort, saying, "She will-" and I shot him.

The freaking Omnicider actually shot shuriken and lightning. The barrel is vertical, but immediately after leaving the spinning stars rotate clockwise a quarter turn, displacement angle decaying to pi/2. By the time they hit they're flat, knifing sideways through the air, and then electrodes dump voltage between them. In five short meters the Omnicider had half a dozen throwing stars in the air, and lightning leaped from the front sight post to the projectiles, chaining between gun and target. Shuriken followed the electrified path. The Serpent got shot, electrified, and then five extra shuriken slammed into him like they were drawn on wires. It blasted him across polished marble floors and sent him spinning into a wall, even as the overhead lights exploded. Everything went dark, except where light came in the windows. 

I had to manually recock the gun like a shotgun and heard a rattle of moving parts. It pulled my arm hair and relaxed. 

I was walking towards the Serpent to confirm the kill when he raised his head and asked, "Mate, why?" in Nick's injured tones.

I blinked at him. "What?"

"You shot me!"

"Yes, I shot you!" I yelled and aimed to do it again.

"Stop! That hurts!"

"It's supposed to!" I thought. "Well, actually, it's not really supposed to hurt you. You're supposed to just die, though I guess it could hurt you to death, and hey! What are you doing!"

The Serpent was shrinking. His legs and arms retracted and turned pale. His head shifted, and his hair went brown. Even the skin of his face retreated like water in a shifting tide, and reduced to Nick's face. He was shorter and smaller than the Serpent, and even though Okut looked lanky, it was merely a deception of his long arms and legs. He had been carrying a lot of muscle. Nick was five, ten kilograms underweight, and picking throwing stars out of his chest. 

"Okay, so...what?" I asked.

"That's what I just asked you!" he yelled.

"Answers, or I shoot you again. You aren't a problem if you're dead."

"Jeez, I wasn't a problem to begin with. I was going to tell you she'll see you now, so you could have just come with me. Then, they would have thought you were coming quietly, and no one would have ambushed you. But you electrocuted me, like a dumbass, and now I'm reverting anyway."

I stared at him nonplussed. "You're a shapeshifter."

"Brilliant deduction, Holmes."

I submerged my brain into inarticulate torrents of non verbal profanity and said, "I did not know that."

"You boogered it up now. They're probably watching on camera, and my cover is blown."

"No. I took the local power down. The cameras should have blown." 

"That would do it," he admitted. 

"Yeah, in a building like this the electrical system forms a cage. It should be grounded, but- Why do you people keep all these damn secrets! Why would I possibly expect you to be a shapeshifter?! I see the Serpent, I shoot him!"

"Maybe you should ask questions first and shoot later?"

"Because you would have lied and said you're the Serpent."

Nick paused. "Okay, well, yes, but in general-"

The Spider's hands shot out from beyond my vision, snatched me into his foot, and he kicked me through a wall. The Omnicider tumbled away. 

That guy I do not like. I was not okay with that. 

The Spider juked high, went low, and delivered a stunning elbow to Nick's face. His nose and cheek shattered as Nick went down. The Spider stomped on him, almost like axe kicks, and I shot the Spider with the Compensator.

Every window in the first story blew out. The wave of destruction ran down the umbilical hallway, a plane wave of erupting glass blasting into the desert. The sound was inconceivable; my brain refused to accept my ears' input. Later I would know it was loud but have no memory of it. I have no idea what exactly it shot, projectile wise. Floyd probably didn't pay to much attention to guns, so whatever realm of weird imaginings from which he drew this thing, it bore little resemblance to mundane firearms. But Good Heavens, it stopped the Spider from kicking Nick while he was down.

When the white spots cleared up, the Spider was gone, there was a human sized hole in the far wall, and Nick was twitching. He'd been at the epicenter of the blast. I fell over, crawled over to him, and tried to establish whether or not he was dead.

Nick's face was congealing. It was laid open by impact craters, but they gelled, merged, and pooled. His cheekbones surfaced out of waves of skin, and then his eyes and ears emerged. In moments he was in better shape than I was. 

"Well, maybe I should have asked questions first," I admitted.

"No, don't do that. Shoot the Spider. I have to survive to heal."

He tried to pick me up, failed, and expanded. His muscles bulked in seconds, inflating into enormous shoulders and chest. His torso flushed out into a power-lifter's belly. He must have put on fifty kilograms in ten seconds, which vaguely offended my physicist sensibilities, before throwing me over his shoulder and running for the outside.

"No. Elevator. We need to go down," I said.

"You aren't going anywhere," he argued, not stopping.

"No. Magician. I have a heal racked- Oh, right. Still, magician. We need to go down."

He thought about it. That was smart. I'd just taken a horrible head injury.

"I don't believe in magic," was the conclusion he came to.

And that was his reasoning. This guy, this shapeshifter, who didn't believe in magic-

"You idiot," I whispered and summoned my powers of obscenity. "You-"

"Before you get started, why do you need to go down? And why the elevator? We're on the ground floor."

"Yes. There's a secret sub-basement several hundred meters underground where Erica Mustermann, or whatever her real name is, is holding Karen and Floyd. She's an evil... something."

"Right. The server room. I knew that. Sorry, I'm putting my brain back together right now."

Nick turned and charged down the hallway to the elevators. The fire alarms had set off the sprinklers so the elevators weren't working, but we had ways of opening the doors. 

The subsequent explosions also cleared the hallway, so Nick slung himself in and grabbed the railing with both hands. His skin grew leathery and slick, and we fell into the earth. 

"Where's Allison?" he asked as we fell.

"Um." I didn't want to answer that. "She might be in Brooklyn."

Nick's feet slammed onto the metal pad at the base of the elevator shaft, and we were eye level with the lowest floor. Hums and evil red lights flickered underneath the doors. 

"Why would she be in Brooklyn?" demanded Nick.

"Is she ninety by any chance?"

Nick was taken aback. He stared at me on guard, sizing me up like a boxer before a fight. "Why would she show you that?" he asked.

"Ah, Allison, um." There was no good way to say this. "She might be dead. That's one of the reasons I shot you, thinking you were the Serpent. He killed her."

Nick mouthed something, some silent word to himself, and sighed. He was still huge, but he sank. His immense body dwindled on a smaller posture. 

"I'm sorry."

Without speaking he grabbed the elevator doors in normal hands and pulled them open. We climbed into the server room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	15. Chapter 15

15

Floyd and Karen sat in metal chairs with their hands and ankles bound through the chair. Their possessions lay spread out on the altar, the act of being searched paused. Both were wired to a box connected to a stack of car batteries. Erica took cover right as we arrived, hiding behind the stone altar, and the Serpent was with her. He was missing a mess of teeth. I declined to shoot first because she'd shown concern over her server array before, and I couldn't threaten them if I'd already blown them up.

"Hello, Martin," purred Erica. 

"Hello, nameless one," I said. 

Neither Floyd nor Karen said anything. They looked horrible. Both wore nothing but electrical wires and sweat, their hands and legs pulled back behind them. They were forced to stretch taught. Erica smiled cruelly, and the Serpent shoved a sloppy bucket between the prisoners. It smelled like diesel.

"Nice gun," said Erica.

I didn't reply. 

Nick and I were sizing up the Serpent, broken teeth and all. He did not look as impaired as he should. He sweated lightly in the hot air, servers running and fans blowing, but his sweat was nearly invisible on his dark skin. Only his arms showed the moisture, but as the beads rolled down, his tattooes danced. His hands might be on fire.

"Let's talk this out," said Erica.

Nick dropped his shirt and expanded, arms lengthening, legs growing. His hide armored and grew scales. Horns jutted from his head. Soon he was covered in spikes and his mouth full of shark teeth. He grew a tail like a scorpion.

The Serpent smiled and writhed.

They were very close to the prisoners, well within any reasonable blast range. Yeah, if I had any normal gun, one with bullets, I could take some shots. This thing had five triggers and no instructions. I had no time to experiment.

"Floyd, I'm going to show you an instructional video on the Colt 1911," I muttered, and Nick initiated hard on the Serpent.

Okut dodged, glided sideways and Nick only smashed the ground. The burning hands flashed and slapped Nick's elbow, the inside where the spikes couldn't grow. Their touch was contagious fire. At once Nick burned and he jumped away, trying to shake the fires out, but it clung. He focused and water spouted from his pores. In the instant of his distraction, the Serpent struck again, lightning fast touches with only the tips of his fingers. Nick screamed and burned from a dozen places.

That wasn't a fight. That was a beating. The Serpent beat the shapeshifter bad enough to assert dominance, then backed off before Nick could die. He moved through a dozen forms, but Okut's fingers were venom. His movements were lies. Nick seemed no slouch, but Okut made a mockery of him until Nick turned into a spire of pure flame, burning like a white pillar. The Serpent jabbed him and set green fires within the white. Then Nick was a thousand colors and screaming.

"Ouch," said Erica.

I slung the Compensator and hosed Nick down with a fire extinguisher. It worked too well. Instead of returning he liquified and boiled on the floor, a seething mass of brown and white fluid. Okut advanced, and I snatched back the big boy.

"I've pulled the trigger and caught the hammer," I said, pointing it sideways into the electronics nest. "Feels like a five, six pound spring in here. Pull your boy off."

Okut acted like he wasn't quite sure what that meant, but he paused. My index finger was straining against the trigger, my thumb slippery on the hammer. Erica's eyes flashed around the room, taking us in. 

"This doesn't look like it's working out for you. Why don't you back out and try again?" she said.

"No. No, I think it's blaze of glory time," I replied, trying to stare down Okut. He had big, black eyes that rarely blinked. When they did it was slow and luxurious, letting me know he blinked of his own volition and not of my will. 

"Run away," she said, digging at my head.

She got nowhere. "Poor trick. I was a little distracted last time, but I've got those doors shut now."

"Oh, I can get in."

"Not with me intentionally blocking you. You've got nothing, just your will."

"Foolish boy," she purred again. "I've got a link on you. I've got you by the soul."

"What? A hair cutting? A fingernail? Saliva from last time?" I smiled.

"A hair cutting? Something you pay a barber once a month to cut from you? LEss often if you can get away with it? A fingernail you remove and discard? Saliva? Do you even notice your saliva? Do you spit when you talk when you're excited. You think my link on you is so weak?"

I gut-checked, and I didn't think Erica Mustermann was bluffing. Maybe she was that good, but I didn't think so.

"Oh, no," she continued. "I own you, Martin Wilson. I bought your student loans."

That... fuck.

"Let's see. What could make you turn around and come back to Ayer's Rock when you were running away? What do you lie awake at night stressing over? What do you worry about on your days off? Ever get worries, Martin? Worried and you don't know why? Ever think you can't escape something and realize it's your bank account? Ever change your course of action because you might save a few bucks? Why are you even here, Martin? Why did you accept the tasking to investigate me? Was it the class four per diem? Where was that going?"

Erica opened a briefcase. "These are, of course, paper copies. The real copies are electronic, everywhere, and nothing you can destroy. But they're good for this. Look at this sheet of paper, Martin. See your name here? I've got your social security number, your address, everything. Do you know I can look up your blood type? What's the most powerful bond? One willingly accepted? Martin, you didn't just willingly accept this. You applied for it. Year after year after year! And by the nature of the link, the permeative essence of the bond, I own you, Martin."

She flicked the paper at me. I hoped it would flutter and separate, random bits of dead tree to scatter and disperse, but they shot at me like they were homing in. They might have been electrified, drawn to my body. I caught them with my off hand and read, gun still halted in the act of firing, and all my friends down, maybe dead. 

She had the deed to my loans. This copy showed the notary's signature, the Loan Identification Number, and my life.

Fuck.

 

While I contemplated how unutterably fucked I was, I concluded that I was, indeed, fucked. If (MartinWilson == True), then parameter (Fucked = True). It's a hot, dry day, here in Fuckedville, and Martin Wilson is town mayor and eternal resident. Next on the radio is Good Fucking Luck, Fucker, by ED Loans and the nature of magic.

Everything she had said was correct. Links are bound and refined by their own nature, and provide benefits as there defined. Suppose you want to scry someone. You might get a bit of their hair because it has power over how they look. Feel someone's touch, and you steal a fingernail. You can straight chop someone's arm off, but then you run into problems in that most of their thoughts about that arm are going to be about how it was chopped off. 

In the days of old when we were a lot less civilized, kidnapping between magicians was common. That was one of the reasons we collected into cabals, covens, and gangs. Prisoners were exchanged, so if anyone in your gang kidnapped from us, your head wizard was about to lose his heir. 

That got heated, and mistakes were made. It became very important to make everything look like an accident. Not something that couldn't be proven to be other than an accident, but something that honestly raised reasonable doubt, and bereaved people were rarely reasonable. Bereaved people will declare war on God over cancer, so you better be damn sure they don't blame you.

Of course, that left a few strictures. How a link could be applied was defined by its nature. Hair for scrying was pretty simple. If you look at it, you can use its image. For someone personal, you might know her by the smell of her shampoo, the softness of her hair as it pulled through your fingers, the way it swirled as she danced. But these all apply when you have it, hold it, sniff it. It doesn't work stuffed away in a box. Erica must have some means of power over me in that briefcase or at least close. She couldn't just wave an Ed Financial logo at me, because then she'd only have the power of irritating reminders and she had the air of one who wanted total power. She could be bluffing. My gut said she wasn't. 

She had power nearby. 

I'm not quite sure what a loan was, physically, anymore. It might be paper in some office, but more likely it was digits in a database, probably distributed across many such things. I wasn't quite ready to burn the informational architecture of the world to achieve my ends, because that way lead lichery. But if I was so limited, so too would be her loan key, whatever physical embodiment of the link she held totemic to her power over me. It could be a laptop. I could blow up the laptop and break her power. The Compensator couldn't just break a laptop, when using it I would have to be careful not to break the laptop. But laptops were cheap.

In that moment I knew how the Devil must have felt when he first spied the Tree of Knowledge. A laptop was cheap, but that one was already set up. It would have to be. It had to have power over my loans. If I could steal that laptop, or whatever, whatever she had, if I could get my totem-

Well now. Wouldn't that be nice?

The smart thing to do would be turn and walk away.

Which was exactly what she wanted. 

Martin, either pull the trigger or start playing to win.

Was that my shoulder angel or shoulder devil? I had no idea. One was saying, "Burn it, burn it all," and the other was muttering about Krakatoa. 

"Okay. Let's talk." I smiled back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	16. Chapter 16

16

Erica's face and eyes were flush, nostrils flared, and she was grinning from teeth to eyes. The room was hotter than blazes as the servers cycled and dumped heat through venturi between the stacks. Colder air roared through ducting in the floor. My nemesis wasn't as sweat plastered as the Serpent, but her suit stuck to her, the cotton turning transparent, and the fine wool over it began to cling to skin and curve. Sweat had also plastered her hair down, sticking the few strays to her head. Beads formed like earrings.

"I've already pulled the trigger," I explained to Okut, who was waiting to pounce. He wasn't even lurking. The Serpent stood a few feet away, hands twisted into S-shapes, and for all his stillness, he was coiled as a spring. 

"With the trigger pulled, the driving spring is trying to force the hammer into the firing pin. You're calculating right now if you can snatch the Compensator out of my hands before I can pull the trigger. That's the wrong thought. You need to ask if you can snatch the gun out of my hands and block the action before the hammer-" I jiggled the tiny recessed nub of it. "-slams forward. Trust me, it's trying."

"I know guns," he hissed.

"Maybe in the real world," I retorted, which he didn't understand. He didn't need to know this thing was a product of Floyd's overmedicated imagination. 

"Serpent, move back," instructed Erica. Okut obeyed in sliding steps. 

"I wasn't going to snatch the gun out of your hands. I would just kill you," he said, retreating to the edge of the columns. 

"Then we'd all have problems, because that has a deadman's switch," said Floyd, softly, and we all jumped. 

I'd sort of forgotten he was there, focused to the point of obsession on Erica and Okut, and that made me realize I was much more tense than I thought. The other two looked at Floyd when he spoke, then both flipped their gazes to the metal box between them. Karen gritted her teeth and clenched, but the box merely dinged. She gasped in relief.

"Interesting," said Erica.

I eased up on the firing pin. Other hammers moved, the hidden knuckles of a clockwork spider's legs laced through the gun. Little gears had teeth so fine they looked hairy. Much as I tried to pay attention everyone, Erica was monopolizing my focus. She was putting on a pair of silver bracelets with artful innocence, the motions of someone doing something to keep their hands full. She looked at me like, "You know us girls and our jewelry."

Right.

"Don't put those on," I said, trying to snap my eyes between her and the Serpent.

"Put the gun down."

"No."

Her expression did not flatter my intelligence. Well, alright. Fine. 

The problem was I had no recourse below shooting. I had absolute recourse; I could blow us all up, but I had no moderate recourse. I couldn't do anything to encourage or discourage her actions. If I played the crazy card, do what I say or we all die, then Erica would call me. If I was alone, I don't think I'd be entirely bluffing, but with Floyd, Karen, and maybe Nick present, I wasn't about to invoke kingdom come preemptively. 

Well, what did she want? Me, obviously, but...no, not me. My blood. She was using the blood of kangaroos for her ritual patterns. I remembered something about kangaroos being apt for such purposes, but rarely used because of the thaumaturgical barrenness of Australia. There was something about the blood of a magi whispering in the vaults of half-learned lore, but I'd never put too much time into blood magic. I don't know how many chemists can make meth off the top of their heads. But the blood of the magi was a thing. She'd want either my blood or magical aptitude, because let's be honest, there's no reason she wanted me as a person. Magically I'm pretty strong, for all that without my rack I was merely a theorist in a workshop.

But what did that give me? Not much. I wasn't going to surrender to her control. That was just stupid. I wasn't willing to do too much bleeding for her benefit either. Blood, freely given and of my own will? Too strong.

"I'm going to release them," I stated and walked over to the captives. Erica eyed me, and her thoughts were plain to read. She couldn't protest either, not without invoking the same absolute finality of my leverage. I undid Karen then Floyd, and gave them back their clothes. The Serpent stood in the doorway to the elevator. 

"So we're leaving-" I began and got interrupted. 

"Serpent, if they try, kill the artist or the boxer. Leave the other alive."

He smiled viciously, and without his front teeth, he had only his canine fangs. The way to the elevator was a long, narrow pathway, close set with clusters of racks. They had been built first, when fewer servers in the room had made less heat. They were denser than elsewhere in the hall, ran on lower power, but provided better cover, deceptive shadows, and vision breaking heat. The Serpent retreated, upper body still as his legs swayed below, carrying him backwards into the forest of columns. Black skin faded into the darkness until a sudden shift of air drew a mirage across him, and he was gone. The pathway to the elevator lead right through that. 

I scowled and gave Floyd the Omnicider. He gave it to Karen. 

"Here. You're in better shape than I am," he said and leaned against my shoulder. His knees shook underneath him, and Karen slid around so we formed bookends. She faced the way out, and I was still trying to get leverage on Erica. Maybe I could induce her to make a mistake.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Your worst nightmare," she replied.

"FORTRAN?"

Erica was so unamused she bordered on physical pain. The box dinged.

"Jokes." 

"Oh, 'cause your worst nightmare was useful!" I yelled.

"If you fail to know yourself-"

And suddenly I was falling, tumbling, and landed hard in Floyd, who was soft, and Karen, who was hard and full of guns. The back of my head hit the Omnicider and cracked like gunshots. There was distant screaming and then nothing.

"Lady and gentleman, please turn your attention to me, because I'm awesome, and then get the hell off me, because you're fat," gloated Floyd from underneath the both of us.

They were all gone. Everyone was gone. Everything. We were in the desert, a stretch of barren dirt deprived of even the low scrub that proliferated through the rangelands. It was pure nothing under a dome of grey sky. Even the sun and stars were gone. There was nothing to see but kangaroo skulls, piled into mountains in mockery of the Kata Tjuta.

"Oh, goodie. You found them."

I climbed off Floyd and got up, as did Karen, and we helped the little artist to his feet. He looked around with excitement, and then saw where we were and hissed. His face fell. Karen and I looked for enemies, and didn't find any, but the mountains of skulls didn't make that reassuring. 

"How did we get here?" asked Floyd.

"That is an excellent question!" I agreed, yelling.

"Dude! I wasn't trying to get here! I was aiming for Brooklyn!"

"Ah, this must be the notorious Kangaroo Graveyard district of Brooklyn. Famous for gentrification and coffee of the damned!" I yelled.

"Children. Hush. What just happened?" interrupted Karen.

"Obviously while I hid between the two of you, I only pretended to lean against you to collect your sweat. Once I scraped some, I dropped it on the ground and drew Brooklyn. Then I trumped us there, only we wound up here. Jeez, pay attention."

In unison Karen and I turned on Floyd. We two had the guns, and from her expression, she was thinking of shooting him too.

She stopped short. "Good thinking, Floyd. Now where are we?"

"No idea."

"Doesn't matter. Can you get us back?" I interrupted them.

"No! Why would I?"

"We're missing one. Nick was with us. He's the blob of goo."

Both of them looked at me. "He was where?"

"You might have missed it, because you two were a little out of it when we arrived. Nick's a shapeshifter, and when we left, he was a pool of goo on the floor. We have to go back for him."

Karen looked at me like I was the lunatic, and Floyd raised a finger to argue. He didn't. Instead he thought for several seconds and then quietly agreed. 

"No one left behind," he said and sketched in the dirt.

Nothing happened. No gateway opened; no doorways appeared. 

"I can't get back," he reported, sounding relieved.

"Try Nick," ordered Karen. "Him, not the place."

Again Floyd assented without conflict. He sketched fast, and this time something happened. We tried to stay out of it, and he focused hard before a sudden lurch and quiver shook our awareness. A mirage rushed up from the dirt and shook Floyd's form before dissipating into the black sky, and then Floyd had a desiccated pool of slobber. It coagulated in the dirt and was still.

"Um." Floyd bit his lip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	17. Chapter 17

17

Erica Mustermann stood alone in a towering rage. She was drenched in sweat, and her lips were cold, pale white and blue, thick white lines bit into thin streaks. Faint auroras crawled in her sleeves from the silver bracelets on her wrists, scuttled up her arms and emerged to fade into the shadows of her throat or curl like serpents on her brow. Some few scuttled down her body and legs and wormed into the ground. By her feet lay lines of salt, dried sweat, that looked like nothing at all. It took her a while to speak.

"Where is he?" she asked in a collected tone.

"Who? The Spider? No idea. Security cameras caught him leaving and haven't picked him up since."

She looked at the Serpent, and sweat froze in her suit. "The magus," she said, enunciating every letter.

"Not here," snapped the Serpent, not looking at her. 

Erica stared at him until he noticed. Ice jewelry beaded up in his short hair until the licking flames on his hands danced. Okut had been crouching, but he stopped to stand fully upright and swaying. Frost fell from his head, spreading out over his shoulders like an immense cowl as the Serpent locked dead eyes with Erica. 

"Find the Spider," she ordered. 

Okut did not move to obey, but Erica turned and walked in the the further recesses of the computing hall, dropping her hands and letting them swing. Her bracelets dangled like dead leaves.

"And remove the bucket. You had a good idea but get it away from the servers."

She was gone, into to back of the working space where the admin terminals stood. The Serpent's blank eyes watched her vanish. Turning to the bucket of diesel he paused in the act of reaching for it as licks of flame still leaped from his fingers. For a moment he considered his hands and the diesel before flouncing into a chair. He waited with a pout.

 

The locusts weren't quite as horrifying as I'd expected. Admittedly I was sitting in the center of the clearing with my head down, fingers in my ears, and humming, but it wasn't that bad. I explained this to Karen. She was trying to be considerate after Floyd had explained my bug aversion, but she wasn't that good at it. She kept awkwardly asking me about how I felt about the locusts, which was not exactly what I wanted to talk about. I tactfully changed the subject by demanding, "Can we talk about absolutely anything else?"

"Fine!" she huffed and sat on her haunches. 

"All right, guys, I got good news and bad news. The bad news is I can't summon food, water, means of escape, other people, firearms, art supplies, or even dirt. See, I was thinking that since we got dirt here, I might just be dealing with a-" Floyd glanced back and forth between Karen and I. "Right. So that's the bad news."

"What's the good news?" I asked. 

Floyd thought hard. "None of the bad guys are here?" he said like a question.

"So you don't have any good news," snapped Karen.

"Well-" hedged Floyd in the tone of voice that said he was about to say it could be worse. 

Karen's expression did not welcome optimism.

"Do you have anything?" retaliated Floyd. "With your future-seeing?"

"No. This place is pretty desolate," she replied.

I looked up. "Why would you say desolate?" I asked.

"Desolate?" She blinked. "Because we're in a barren dirt-field with nothing but kangaroo skulls and bugs, maybe?" 

"Actually, that doesn't make any sense," said Floyd, intercepting the nascent conflict. "Locusts don't live in the desert. We call the Outback a desert, but it's really not. It's a rangeland. Which makes sense, because locusts need to eat. That's why they're such a problem. They eliminate fields, crops, that sort of thing. But this place isn't rangeland; it isn't even really desert. This place is something else. There's no reason for a locust swarm to be here."

Both Karen and I stared at him. 

"How do you know anything about locusts?" Karen asked.

"A swarm moved through Kansas while I was living at Riley," he replied.

"Why were you at Fort Riley?" I asked. I couldn't imagine Floyd in the Army.

"I was a military brat," he replied and still did not understand why it wasn't obvious. 

"Hold on. Explain that," ordered Karen.

"There's not really much to explain," said Floyd. "My Mommy and my Daddy tolerated each other very much, and they were in the Army. I grew up on a bunch of different Army bases, and one, Riley, had a locust swarm. It moved through and ate everything. I was a kid, bugs were cool, so I read up on locusts. They're just grasshoppers. Lady with the teeth back at the hotel, Mrs Chloe, everything she said was mostly right, but locusts only really swarm where they can eat. There's nothing here to eat. There aren't even roots. I dug a bit and looked. So it's not like they ate everything already."

He paused to think something through. "Which isn't really even in question, because we knew this place was weird to begin with, what with the skulls. These must be the heads of those dead kangaroos we found in Kim's place." 

He went on a tangent about the differences between deserts and rangelands, mentioning rainfall, altitude, and some of the flora and fauna, all in a bland tone of one making conversation. He likened the Outback more to the serengeti than something like Moab.

Now I was squinting at Floyd with my mouth open, and Karen clearly had no idea who he even was. "How do you know all that?" she asked.

Floyd still did not see what the problem was. "I told you, I draw landscapes. I spend a lot of time looking at NatGeo." He looked back and forth between us. "Why? What did you think I did?"

"Smoke weed and draw butts," I replied.

Floyd looked deeply offended and opened his mouth to retort. And then he paused. And then he shut his mouth. And then he said, "I do more than that."

Karen asked about the dead kangaroos at Kim's place, and we backfilled her on everything that had happened since the fight in the hotel room. We asked her about the fight, but she was either cagey or stoic on the details.

"There were two of them. Don't believe the nonsense you see on TV. You can't fight two trained opponents and win, and I had no place to run. I managed to knock the Serpent's teeth out, but then the Spider jumped on me."

She was taking it better than I was taking the exterior swarm, but she was a professional after all. I was impressed, but didn't want to say anything. There's no way to tell someone they lost impressively without appearing condescending. "What happened after they grabbed you?"

"Not much," she admitted. "I got taken downstairs, stripped, tied to a chair, and interrogated. They were asking me about who I was, why I was in Australia, that sort of thing, when they grabbed Floyd. Then they did the same thing to him."

"That was the bad part," said Floyd in a curiously neutral tone. "We both tried not to talk, so they hooked us up to each other. It was bad. So I started giving them little things, like my name, but they always seemed to work more out of it, until I either stopped talking and they shocked Karen, or sometimes they would just start asking Karen, and then she would shock me. It was-"

"Floyd, you know-" interrupted Karen.

"I do know!" he interrupted her back. "Listen, we both know. Even knowing what they were doing, I know they got us working on each other, and when we started thinking about that, they used it too. Whatever happened, I hold no grudges. That was all them."

"Yeah," agreed Karen, and she didn't talk about it any more. Floyd looked away. It felt weird to watch two people agree to forever repress a memory together.

As their silence lengthened, I asked, "Did she ask anything, or reveal anything, that might be useful?" 

They both looked at me like an interloper, but Karen spoke. "She asked about you. She's a bit worked up over you."

"Called you 'the magus,'" affirmed Floyd.

"Yeah, there's a thing called bloodmagic, and it's about as bad as it sounds. The blood of kangaroos has certain significance to it, and the blood of a bound magician has more significance. If kangaroo blood is eighty seven unleaded, magician blood is race fuel."

They waited. I waited. Floyd said, "You know, Martin, you'd be a lot more mysterious if you weren't curled up in a ball, hiding from the grasshoppers."

"Our ways are not to be understood by mortals."

"Now Martin-sweetie," said Karen in a tone suspiciously un-sweet. "You know Floyd and I are very impressed by how mysterious you are. We're so impressed. We would be even more impressed if you explained to us what was going on, so we could bask in your majesty. Isn't that right, Floyd?"

"Like lizards."

I looked up. "I'm a majestic lizard?"

"No. We're the lizard. Lizards. We're basking like lizards on a hot rock."

"But we can't do that if you don't explain what's going on. You know how lizards don't bask at night," said Karen.

"Lizards do not bask at night," agreed Floyd.

"And he'd know, because he reads NatGeo." Karen said.

"National Geographic: More Than Just Butts," Floyd quoted.

It was amazing how they could keep straight faces while lying like that. I wanted to refuse because they were buttering me up and weren't polite enough to let me pretend to believe them, but on the other hand, they might be doing a double-blind where they flattered me without expecting me to believe it. Empty flattery being no more empty if I knew it was empty, this might be overt empty flattery and subtle real flattery! Or they could be playing me like a moron. It didn't matter. I was going to tell them anyway. 

"Fine. So I told you I'm a magician-" 

That was how far I got before Floyd interrupted me. "You never proved that."

"Yeah, I did. Subtle Messengers."

"Can you cure Nick?" asked Karen.

We all paused and looked at the ooze. Residue from the fire extinguisher still gave it a white tint, while the edges were brown with moondust. 

"I, uh, I really think he's dead," I said.

"Can you try?"

"Uh..." I stammered and rubbed my head. "You need to know something about Ayer's Rock. Australia in general. It's not a good place for experimentation. Things go wrong, badly, and usually fatally. When a spell goes wrong, typically you don't know what's going to happen. But in Australia it's not like that, and Uluru is the worst. It's the epicenter of fatal accidents. No one really knows why.

"You can't cure death. Experimenting with healing the dead is a bad idea anywhere. Around here it's just terrible. Especially here-here," I added, waving my hand at the skulls, locusts, and barrens.

"Will you try?" she pressed.

Floyd looked between her and me, and took a half step back. 

"I don't think I'm properly explaining the potential, and likelihood, for further fatalities from that," I vacillated.

"So you won't."

What I meant to say was "No," but I didn't get that far, trailing off into a string of unconstrained vowels. I hummed and fidgeted. "I don't have it racked."

"Why can't you try?" she said again.

"Because he's dead!" I exclaimed and walked away from her to look at Nick's remnants.

"But why can't you try!?" she yelled, words pulling me around. She stood ankle deep in moondust with dried skulls everywhere, her skin burned red. 

"Because magic isn't happy thoughts! I would have to build something, write it out longhand, and run it on the first compile. Any compiletime or runtime errors result in us dead. Even then the construct has to actually work. It's like medicine! There is no 'cure wounds' medicine! A coagulant isn't going to help him if he's having a stroke, and right now, he's a pool of goo. But we all get involved in that. We're not just giving it to him. We're taking the medicine too, and we have no diagnosis, I'd be running freehand off a construct I don't use much, we're compiling it next door to ULURU, and so you're talking about accepting an immense risk when he's already dead!"

Looking at her brought us back to Erica, and my mind was putting pieces together while I wasn't looking. 

My words were going to fall on deaf ears. "Karen, this is how she works. Erica. She feeds on desperation. I don't know what her scam is, but it's a scam. She finds people like you, and tells them magic can do things it can't. You want to believe so bad because nothing else can help you, and then you hear about magic, the ultimate power, and you think that because it's not medicine, it has no limits at all. Trust me, it always has limits. She's promising you something too good to be true. You can't raise the dead."

It looked like I was getting through to her. "Why can't anyone ever do anything?" she moaned and sat back down on her haunches. 

"So why are you here?" asked Floyd. 

"Didn't I tell you this? My boss sent me to investigate Erica Mustermann, German Jane Doe, when she started making claims about raising the dead. She's an ex-con on the run for selling perpetual motion machines, just FYI-" I poked Karen in the side when I said it, and she half-heartedly swatted me. "I told my boss it was a scam, but he sent me here anyway."

"But why? If Uluru is as bad as you make it out to be, why investigate a false report at all?"

"I think he's mad at me. I used a lot of charm on him."

Neither of them was prepared to argue this point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	18. Chapter 18

18

The Spider realized late in life his training had been so dangerous because his Master had been using him to bait Death. It had been imperative the Spider never learn. Death was too wily to be trapped if the bait lacked devotion, and to the Spider's way of thinking, there was no reason to doubt. Of course his training had been hard, frequently deadly, but hard work yields great results. The Spider had always wanted to be great.

So perfect was his indoctrination into fighting in the grey land between life and death he had assumed it was part of his training until the Magus had shot him. That had not been part of his training. The Magus was the target, and his Master was gone. This was neither a drill, nor had he summoned his state of power. How then had he returned to the beige land?

Oh.

It was obvious in retrospect. 

Peculiarly, he ran faster and thought quicker while suffering from terminal blood loss. That had always been the point. No, he corrected himself. That was what he'd been taught to believe was the point. Deceit of instruction aside, it had certainly worked. 

He scuttled away from the Empire, mirrored windows catched a second sky in the concrete, and kept low lest the Magus resume fire. There was no way of knowing what exactly that gun did. The Spider bled from his torso, hips, waist, and head, and his fingers were already black with blood-mud. It was too soon. He shouldn't be bleeding that hard yet. The sun was a hammer, the earth an anvil. Scrub bushes eaten down to the root hid like daggers in the soil, waiting to trip and catch him. His sense of balance was already gone. Once down, there would be no getting up. His mind moved like wildfire.

In the parking lot he spotted the car for hire and fell into the unlocked back seat, shocking the driver out of his oblivious daze of noodles and egg. 

"Take me to a hospital," demanded the Spider, who had very long ago been called Pho Tam.

"Use the app," retorted the driver.

"The Magus has shot me, and I will pay you thousands of dollars," whispered Tam on a hunch. His legs no longer worked. He could not sit.

Hank twisted and looked at Tam. His seats were covered in blood. The little man was dying, and the hospital was twenty minutes away. The Spider wouldn't make it that long.

"Don't bother with your seat belt," said Hank. Tam's vision moved forward through time and froze as Hank reached for the gearshift.

Man could run, bird could fly, fish could swim. Goodness was obeying the rules. Do as you are ordered, Spider, for your training will make you an angel among men. Do not question your orders, for to reach beyond your limits is to do evil. Man may run, bird may fly, fish may swim. It is not for you to fly or swim. Goodness is obeying the rules.

In Hank the accelerator pedal was a force of evil. There were switches underneath the dash that illegally altered the ECU, causing the engine to rev high and dump into first gear. Using them violated traffic laws, voided the warrantee, and consumed unhealthy amounts of tires, but this had been made in the old days of Mercedes, when things had been built with a diabolical lust for perfection and speed. The ad-hoc launch control hit the Spider with the back seat, scooping him off the bench and plastering him against the backrest.

Time no longer past. Moments piled up like slow walkers on a sidewalk, refusing to either travel or get out of the way, and the Spider hurried between instants. 

Hank passed 200 km/h on the access road, a kilometer long extension of the parking lot for the construction equipment and tourist buses. Tam bled and stared at the blue sky. It was blue without clouds, and he thought he could see stars, brighter points hidden in the velvet. The Empire flashed through the window, an endless instant of concrete spire. How tall it was! Why would anyone build something so tall? It raked the heavens with loose spars and girders unsatisfied in their purpose. Tam could not look away. He examined it in detail, counting windows, and sounding out the words on the whipping tyvek. The sheet tumbled and danced up high, speaking of winds, and Tam couldn't stop himself from reading. The English moved too fast. English was such a bizarre language. 

The access road met the street where the stress arced, a clever bit of geometry so an overburdened dump truck or ponderous crane could go straight while more maneuverable cars swept around to the side. Hank had sacrificed maneuverability to the gods of 250km/h, and they were jealous deities. There was no going back on that deal. But the access road was straight to a chamfered curb, half a dozen cm of total drop onto blacktop. 

It was many leagues to Tam. The car rose, and why did it rose? The sky filled the windows. Then it fell, and Tam considered the fall. He thought about the descent, wondered why a four-wheeled thing would be falling, and wondered if the car could jump. He wondered what it would feel like when it hit bottom. Every sensation was there to be considered and understood, and his blood trickled like water off the back seat.

They landed in the grey land. The sky was too blue to have color, and the black stars behind it sang. There was no sun above.

"Consider hurrying," said Tam. "Death is coming for me."

"Yeah, I know you're about to-"

Tam could hear the exact moment Hank looked in his rear view mirror and saw the cloak-wrapped specter rip the trunk lid off the car.

"You mean like what?" screamed Hank, and Tam took time to consider the question. Those words did not compose an interrogative sentence.

Death ripped the rear windshield off and went for Tam's throat. Carp-Tail Block, Carp's Whiskers Sting, Mouth Traps Worm, and the Spider broke Death's arm. 

If Tam's awareness was a hyper-significant sequence of moments drawn out over wires of intensity, Hank's was a jumbled collision that moved entirely too fast. Velocity was a part of it, but a physical embodiment of Death ripping the back of the car open, the trunk lid was still airborne as the car shot away, to grapple with the little Thai fighter in the back seat was all-together dominant. Except they were going 287, Hank corrected himself. One mustn't forget that. 

The answer was faster. Hank accelerated.

Between Ayer's Outpost and Yulara was a gentle stretch of well maintained road. An intricacy of the lawsuits between the Empire Resorts and everybody had been allegations that the Northern Territories were intentionally neglecting road maintenance in the vicinity of Ayer's Rock. This was absurd, and to counteract the absurdity, the roads had all been resurfaced lest collateral lawsuits instigate fires of secondary litigation. That intent had failed and the Empire was suing them anyway, but the roads were great.

Inside the car the winds were insane and capricious. The engine was a typhoon, but Hank could hear Tam muttering as he fought. 

"The Mantis must have succeeded in taking your scepter. Foolish Death. All things come to you. Why would you be impatient?" said the Spider as he dropped short, bone-breaking strikes that crumpled Death's legs and ribs. The cloaked hips shattered under his hands. Death did not stop. As mice keeled over in the road's shoulder and worms died underground, a wake of sudden expiration chased the car, focused on the flying figure of black robes and dessicated limbs. Its fingers were so bony they functioned as claws. Each drop of Tam's blood, and there were many, sucked out of the seat leather and drenched carpet, rejuvenated the specter.

"Do not remonstrate me for past errors. I am uninterested in hearing 'I told you so' from someone who provided no useful advice to begin with," Death castigated him. "I have patience now and will delight in passing you through the grey land."

"I have been trained for this," observed the Spider.

"But you have been trained to fail," replied Death, low voice, quiet, either an old woman or man.

"That is a problem," the Spider admitted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to avoid the opacity that the ending to Lanterns had. There it was unavoidable, given Roland's uncommunicative nature, but with most of the cast of KG being much more talkative, it should be pretty clear. On the other hand there's a bigger cast to juggle and more threads. 
> 
> There's a real trap to avoid being that wrapping up all of the threads can slow the pacing down to a slog, and it's every bit as important to keep things moving while tying off the subplots as it is to hit each one. Neither can be screwed up. What surprised me was having more threads can make the ending flow faster, because there are more bodies in motion to crash and burn. 
> 
> On a mechanical note, it's still so dialogue heavy as to be almost a play. The dialogue is the most fun to write, but the work is in the bones underneath, setting and mood. They're getting better.
> 
>  
> 
> Edit: 2/1/2016


	19. Chapter 19

19

At 240 km/hr Hank hit a rock the size and shape of a pizza box. It threw the Mercedes up on two wheels, and Hank over-corrected. Air caught the bottom and tried to flip him. He correctly corrected, slammed all four wheels onto asphalt, and something snapped, kicking up a scream of metal on metal from the right front. The back end bumped over something kicked loose from under the car, and the Spider tumbled head over cloak with Death as the spectre tried to get his life-ending fingers on the Spider's throat. Pho Tam, the Spider, had collectively inflicted forty three compound fractures on the withered fingers, but they still reached. Now they had spars of bone splinters jutting from the dried skin, enabling them to rip and tear as well as seize. Death's fingers stabbed at the Spider's eyes. Hank straightened the car, and found them driving across the oncoming lanes, headed directly for crude rock. He fishtailed, and the rear wheels spat gravel. Death tumbled free of the Spider, bounced off the back door and C-post where the roof was ripped open, and the Spider smashed him with fists, feet, and elbows.

"Frunk theesa unts," muttered Hank, not in any known language of man. He got the car straight, hit the apex of a curve, and spotted the far corner where a broad shoulder extended beyond the road in an oxbow of asphalt, left over from construction. It was wide enough,

Man did not drive by engine alone, but on every shriek over overburdened brakes. Hank hit the emergency brake, got sideways, and threw the combatants out of the back seat into the tumbling desert. The car should have stayed flat, but a broken bit of aero caught the road under the front wheels, and lifted the whole thing sideways. The Mercedes bounced and rolled, smashing strands of spinifex and getting hooked in turn. 

The Spider caught Death as they flew, landed on top of the grey ghost, and wrapped himself in the spectre's cowls like armor. As the wreck finished, he stepped off and faced Death to find the other had died.

It took the Spider several seconds, even the state of heightened awareness brought on by his own ongoing exsanguination, to figure out what had just happened.

"We must be next to a blowhole," he said out loud, his internal monologue traumatically vocalized. 

"The what?" murmured someone faintly.

The Spider looked. The Mercedes was nose down, trunk up, and one of the doors had been so twisted round it got underneath the car body, pointing up relative to the cabin. It was planted through Hank's middle. He had been vivisected by the door, and he was scrabbling at it, blindly clawing at the door handle itself. He couldn't understand why the clicking handle didn't work and why he was still trapped. 

"Blowhole," said the Spider, walking over. "The White Fire worked. I thought she was crazy, but she did it. The White Fire worked."

"Why can't I move?" asked Hank. He was whimpering and confused.

The Spider checked. "You've been cut in half. Once the blowhole vents, it will purge the block. Either the next Death or this one will come for you then. Not relevant to your current problem. You're already dead, and that looks like it hurts."

"But why can't I move?" complained Hank again. 

"Because you're dead," repeated the Spider. He reached down and patted Hank on the head. "Good luck with that. Hopefully I won't see you on the other side."

"But I can't move!" exclaimed Hank in a small, forlorn voice in the wide desert. The car rested on his lungs and interfered with his breathing. This was not the Spider's problem. 

Pho Tam stretched and noted his own wounds were paused in the act of bleeding, bubbling on his side. He did a little math, comparing the unknown but nearby blowhole to his mental calendar, and sized up the distance between him and Yulara, not far down the road at all. He should have plenty of time.

Leaving Hank to die alone, the Spider jogged cross country north from the wreck.

 

My phone rang in hell.

"Dude! What the-"

"Yes, I checked already!" I screamed at Floyd, and answered. "Hey, Hank, listen-"

"Wizard-guy, I'm gonna die."

I blinked. His voice was small, scared, and confused liked a child. He didn't understand. With the door on his lungs he couldn't make much noise, letting him little more than whisper into the phone. 

"I'm gonna die."

Karen and Floyd had been shouting at each other over something stupid, but they had stopped and stood up, facing me. Miraculously, neither spoke. There was something in my face, and they looked.

"Hank, you're not going to die," I lied. "You're going to be fine."

"I'm going to die, mate. I wasn't wearing my seatbelt, and my car fell on me. It's on my lungs."

"Hank, listen to me, you're going to be fine. Floyd, draw Hank. Karen, scoop up Nick. Listen Hank, you're going to be okay."

He started coughing, telling me he was scared, and I made noises with my mouth. 

The locusts were screaming outside, and I couldn't hide from them. Floyd ripped the moondust with his fingers, slashing broad lines in the ground I couldn't understand, and Karen raced to Nick. He didn't even have a body. She hesitated over him before attempting to scoop him together. Nothing stuck to her fingers, and she only jiggled the amorphous pile. 

"Dude, I don't have that guy," said Floyd, the same scared voice I was hearing on the phone and in person. "He's not coming through."

"Hey, Hank, do you remember Floyd? He was the black guy who rode out to Uluru with us. Can you talk to him for a moment so he can call someone for you?"

"Wizard-guy, I need you to do something," whispered Hank. His voice was softer than moments ago. I ran over to Floyd and stuffed the phone into his hands.

I've seen photographs that don't look like their subjects, but Floyd's eight-second sketch of kicked dirt on rock was a damned masterpiece. It was one of those optical illusions when drawn from above, but the whole thing was slashed out in negative space. Hank wasn't in the dirt, he was in the rock piled on top. His face was obsessed with his car, quick to laugh and interject but always focused more on outside the windshield than us. Floyd had captured short-cut hair in pebbles and the look of sudden attention yanked from distraction with wide-eyes. He might have labelled it, "Driver realizing there are people in his car." 

I stared at it and wished. Floyd was trying to talk on the phone, but his impenetrable chill was cracking. Hank was scared, and he was scaring Floyd. Karen tried to do anything with Nick.

Lightning cracked behind the locusts, and they flashed, burned, and died. Dead ones rained down on us. We tried to save the sketch, but big dead bugs littered it giving Hank plague spots. The locust swarm roared and split. Magog walked out of the west carrying a scythe.

Magog the Destroyer spoke first.

"In most times Death is a personal thing. It is a matter of you and perhaps your murderer. The White Fire has abrogated that deal. Death is now a zero-sum affair. Between us, we owe one life. You may fight me all at once or one at a time. Those that do not die first will live."

Karen stood up and turned her back on the Mantis. She pointed at Floyd. "You, make the drawing work." She pointed at me. "You, take care of Nick."

"Karen, I'm not letting you take a hit for me again," replied Floyd, who had cupped my phone against his chest.

"Floyd, you once lost a fight with an inflatable tube man. Shut up."

I didn't know quite what to make of that, so I looked at the little artist. He was frozen in the act of arguing, rummaging for words.

"First of all," he began, but Karen was already walking towards the Mantis.

I charged Floyd and made him start talking again. Once he was, I raced over to Nick and started working, but there was nothing productive to be done. It was all on Karen. 

The boxer and the grappler faced each other. The Mantis bowed fractionally as Karen tapped her fists together like gloves. The Mantis unlimbered the scythe and swept it back and wide. 

For a big man Magog had fast hands. He used the scythe like a hook, sweeping beyond Karen at the maximum range given by his long arms and the haft, and tried to trap her towards him. Twice he made good attempts, and she dodged forward to avoid having her back cut open. Once she was close he released one hand from the weapon to snatch at her, but they'd both underestimated each other's speed, for close, Karen was dazzlingly fast on her own. She parried his first hand, and ducked under and around the second. Each time he returned to a two-handed grip before she could take advantage of the opening, and she didn't risk staying close. After that they had a measure of respect for each other. She stayed outside his threshing ground, and he had to dash to close. The Mantis was a boulder, and all that muscle was weight. I thought she was dead if he could put his hands on her, but after a few lunges, he started breathing hard and slow while she looked like she was still warming up. She jabbed him twice, probing shots on his outer scythe arm when she maneuvered to the back side of the blade and the leverage was all wrong for him to club her. He tried, of course, but wiffed. Her jabs were no more productive. They established a stalemate.

A stalemate she won with better cardio would kill Hank. We didn't have twelve rounds for her to work. Floyd was losing his cool trying to keep Hank calm, and his drawing wouldn't move. Hank was bleeding time. The artist had gotten the driver to explain his situation and was now making Hank promise to stop moving. If the car door was keeping his guts plugged, he needed to let it. But Hank was panicking in a manner I, not pinned to my death by my own car, wasn't about to criticize him for, and Floyd's unflappable chill was fluttering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	20. Chapter 20

20

I made three snap decisions. There was nothing I could do for Nick. He was dead, and I couldn't even retrieve his remains. Sorry Nick. You were a good dude. 

There was nothing I could do for Karen. She was no longer treating the Mantis' hooking scythe as a physical weapon but as an chthonic god. He should be able to reach ten feet; she defended as if he could reach twenty. I knew enough of boxing to know that there was more to it than roaring and punching, and those two were deep in technique, stutter steps without rhythm and movement without warning. Their hands were so fast I couldn't see them. They existed entirely in memory for they went from safe space to safe space, leaving me to bewilderingly recollect what they done in between. The violent indiscretions of my youth were only enough to make known Karen and Magog were out of my league. 

Floyd was better at handling Hank than I, and if we were to get out of here via Floyd's abilities, he should be the one talking to the driver anyway. He was making Hank describe himself and his surroundings, adding details to the trump scratched on the ground. He added a sweep of flatland, broken by bursts of desert grass, and with flicks of his foot rendered the cluster of bladed leaves. The injured man was staying busy, describing things. My interference wouldn't help.

I had no spells racked, and my power wasn't the sort of thing to be summoned blithely, not wherever the hell we were. My head thundered with the silences where my rack wasn't. The guns didn't work, and I didn't think shooting over Karen's head would be a good idea if they did. I looked for things to work with.

The desert was unbroken, the locusts relentless, and the skies hidden. I couldn't even see Uluru. The earth was pulverized dust overlooked by mountains of kangaroo skulls. I made my fourth decision. There was nothing here that was going to help. 

Karen had dropped her hoodie to fight Magog, so I searched it. Wallet, no good, room key, not helpful, chap-stick, if we got to a place where chapstick became relevant, we were past the problems I was trying to solve, and her phone, which she'd tried and tried and tried again. We'd all tried them. I stared at it. Hank had called me.

I called Karen's landline uncertainly.

"Jack's Off Brand Meatery, the old choke and smoke," answered a voice I'd never heard.

That couldn't be a wrong number.

"Jack, this is Martin. I'm the magus."

"Yup, yup. I knew you from the future."

That was BS. "Fine! I'm thinking of a number-"

"No, you're aiming for a test of faith, which if you'd listened, you'd know you don't get to do."

I hesitated. "Okay, yes, but that's not really that hard a guess."

On the other end of the line, someone inhaled smoke. The soft crackle of tobacco burning wafted through the phone. "Let me break this down Barney-style, Martin Magician. Nothing I'm going to say is that hard of a guess. You want to know how to be happier? Be nice to people. Want to know how to get over guilt? Forgive others. That shit you've been hearing since age two? Yeah, people say it because it works. You're asking questions about avoiding being hit by cars and acting cynical when I tell you to look both ways before you cross the street."

"That's fucking helpful. Clearly the way to escape the kangaroo graveyard is push the walk button. Damn. You are so smart."

"Nah, Ems. You got to have faith."

"Faith in what?" I demanded.

Jack hit his cigarette. I wanted to pull an omniscience and ask him if he smoked unfiltered, but I was too frustrated.

"There's a bit to that," he admitted, smoke rolling over his vocal cords and shifting his voice. "If you'll grant me that we only have time for an incomplete answer, I'll give you one. Otherwise it's everything, and that's more true than helpful."

I hemmed. "Yeah, sure."

"Other people. Specifically, Karen and Floyd."

"That's your helpful answer? Thanks. I'm already letting them handle matters because they're doing better than I can."

"Nah, nah. Not like that. You've got to have faith that they'll do the right thing. You see a bum. You give him a buck if you have faith he'll buy food, you tell him you have no change if you think he'll buy booze. If you give it to the homeless shelter instead, you're showing faith in the shelter. You need to help Karen."

"What, you want me to annoying-sidekick right in there?" 

I looked at the Karen-Magog fight. Yeesus. 

"Yup."

"Ah, that doesn't sound healthy."

"Nah, it's really going to hurt. You, sir, are about to get your ass beat."

I didn't immediately respond to that. The phone was sweaty against my jaw, screen dripping and muddy, and the mic uptake was rimmed in grime. 

"Am I going to survive?" I asked.

"You might."

"I might!? You imperfectly-omniscient bag of dicks!"

"Dude! I can't tell you shit about the future. It invalidates your choices, because the meaning of them derives from your commitment, and commitment is risk. Without risk, there is no faith, but in knowledge there is no risk."

"Will you do anything for me if I don't!?"

"Not really. Outside my pay grade."

I spent several seconds calling Jack increasingly complex sexual deviancies until we came to a self-aware replication error. He had no response to that. In fact he didn't say anything, just smoking and thinking on the other end before admitting, "I honestly don't know if that's even possible. I'll check when I head back to the other side, but I'm just not sure if that can be done." He hummed a few toneless bars. 

"Bloody wanker," I muttered, hung up, and dropped the phone. "Karen, God told me to help!" I yelled and charged Magog.

They were six meters apart from each other because Magog's speed and reach meant anything else was contact range. Neither of them quite knew what to make of me. Karen started yelling something about me being stupid, with which I concurred, and Magog tried to move around so he was facing us both. Karen had none of it. Her legs shifted on autopilot to put him between us. The Mantis glanced back and forth between us in blinding speed, then initiated on me with the scythe.

I dodged the first swing! It was great! Karen closed five meters in half a second as the scythe went past, and then I met the fist.

There are no words to describe what getting hit by Magog felt like. There's no way to convey that sensation. It was an experience of the soul, rapturous impact, becoming one with the universe as the fist deprived me of the sanity of a body. We went beyond limits, into a realm where anything was possible, and there were no feelings. I could fly. And oh, sweet mercy, did that hurt.

Because of the way the Mantis style works he could actually throw punches faster than claw-hands, hence he didn't shred me. Nor was he willing to remain undefended against Karen, whom put her fist to his kidneys. Magog was thinking of death, and a kidney shot won't immediately kill you, so his guard was up when Karen, an odd foot shorter, went down. I learned all of this later. At the moment I was in pain. I translated through a mountain of skulls, rolled through dirt, and ate rock into a trump of Lucky Hill Adventure Supply, four shirts for ten dollars, which was eight over their value. I seriously did not know who or where I was. He punched the identity out of me. My world was white stars, Lucky Hill Adventure Supply was before me, and so naturally I assumed I was a convenience store. 

I worry I'm not accurately conveying how much damage Magog did when he hit me. That was a cross.

Karen's fist sent shockwaves jiggling through his body, and he twisted. She was too far inside the range of the scythe. She tagged his ribs as they shot past her, and then dropped her own hip as his free hand shot above. He missed, slashing down but she was below his stomach and flowing into an uppercut that connected with the inside of his knee while he was torquing for power. Tendons like mooring cables ruptured, and his muscles rolled up inside his legs like venetian blinds. The Mantis screamed and dropped, the scythe dropped as well but out of his hands, and Karen caught it and cut his head off.

Karen rolled me over. "Don't EVER- oh, you're not even listening, jackass." She carried me to Floyd.

"Wow," said Floyd when he could speak.

"Can you get us out of here yet?" asked Karen.

"What do you think I'm trying to do?" he replied. "Nevermind. You're focused. Look around us."

"Why?" demanded Karen before she did so, and then spotted the stars burning holes in the locust swarm. Lightning that didn't fade cracked the sky behind them, cutting through to the heavens. The earth rolled. 

In the moments of tumult the trump of Hank grew depth and features. It was at once more here than there, until the car rushed past empty highway south of Alice Springs, empty until you paid attention and started noting plants that did nothing to call you too them. The air caught fire and stabilized, wobbling, and Floyd detected a distinct pressure to break, resisted by an equally great force to remain. They bounced against each other. Floyd made Hank speak to hear his voice, and Karen bent her will on the drawing to evoke it. They stepped through into living desert.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	21. Chapter 21

21

The immediacy of our predicament was not reduced. Hank lay dying, his legs and torso almost separate. The Mercedes stood over him like a henge, propped up by the bent door. Floyd and Karen mutually considered and discarded knocking the car over. Hank would bleed out like an unplugged water bottle. 

"Can you trump the apartment?" she asked Floyd.

"Hmm? Oh, yeah." He knocked out a sketch in seconds.

Karen stared at it and walked into Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

The air was a tobacco fog even with two windows open, but Karen had no time to breath. She grabbed a bag from her room, passed Jack without a word, and dialed Floyd from her land line. "Bring me back."

In the seconds remaining she looked up at the smoking man for judgement.

"Go get 'em, girl," said Jack quietly, and she was gone.

Back in Australia she dropped the bag, got salts, and waved them under my nose. I woke up and started cursing.

"Yes, we agree profoundly. Floyd's about to trump the driver to a hospital. Do you have a better idea?" she demanded of me. 

"Sorcery!" I yelled. I wasn't sure what she was asking. "What happened?"

"You got knocked out." Karen's mind shot through several fast turns. "So be it. We're taking you to the hospital too."

"Don't."

"You likely have traumatic brain injuries. You need medical attention."

"I'm going to magic myself."

"I thought that was a terrible idea," she snapped, and her words sounded like hidden accusation. 

"If we don't have time to argue, we certainly don't have time for me to explain. I'm going to-"

"Floyd, what have you got?" interrupted Karen with the sudden but absolute decision that brain injury was causing whatever I had to say. She turned to her roommate. 

"We're going to have to knock the car of him, because none of us is carrying it through the trump. But it's the only thing keeping his guts in. So-" His face fell, then hardened. "We'll just have to be fast. We'll just pick up and move the car fast. There's three of us."

"Two of us. Martin's loopy. It's you and me, roomie."

"Then we'll manage," said Floyd. He started drawing in the dirt.

"Would you two give me ten seconds?" I demanded, was ignored, and stood up. The world spun, and sun rose and set south. I might have been a little concussed. I tottered past the artist and Karen who had squatted to stay with Hank, and wondered if this was Hank's same car. It should be. 

It was! My latex gloves were still under the seat. And that meant my Subtle Messenger should still be hanging. It was.

The construct still echoed in the cabin, the repeated resonance of my invocations stacking with the IE's replies in kind via animals. Australia was so quiet that the echoes hadn't been subsumed by ambient noise, leaving them open to repeating without rebuilding.

"If you're listening, you'd know that no one really knows why Australia is so dangerous," I said as I tapped the construct and summoned frogs. They appeared in my gloved hands. "But that doesn't mean it's out to get you. It just means you have to be careful."

The frogs vanished into the shadows of the desert, little niches between spiny grass and dark alcoves under exposed rocks. Trickles of green pond-water sprouted where the messengers went. Everything smelled like ammonia. 

"And it means you stick to what you know. Like Hank. Hank, your problem is bleeding. Hank, you are not the first person with a bleeding problem," I said to him, voice flat, head swimming. "We're familiar with bleeding."

"Wizard-guy," whispered Hank, almost beyond words, and the frog came back.

"Brace yourself," and I sight-read the blood spider conjuration.

 

At St Mary's teaching hospital in Boston two men fell through the front doors as a nurse was trying to explain to a middle-aged woman that her son's sprained wrist didn't get the boy to the head of the urgent care line. The woman had just started yelling when the nurse looked over her shoulder at the small framed, wild-eyed man who lurched up and sprawled on the counter. He was bleeding out of his unfocused eyes.

"Hi," said the madman.

The nurse hit a button. "Sir, what is-"

The madman was half carrying his buddy, and at the question pulled his buddy's shirt open. The angry woman couldn't see around the madman to view the injury. 

"Sweet mercy!" screamed the nurse, and people appeared from the ether. 

A sub-five foot asian woman in green scrubs appeared like the genie of the lamp as the buddy was hoisted and immobilized on a gurney. She peeled the shirt back, glanced at the wound, and yelled, "Prep for O.R!" before checking for breathing. The madman pitched over onto his side from the counter, and tiny doctor noticed he was bleeding out of his ears. "Him too!"

The woman and her son were left alone in the lobby.

About fifteen minutes later three Animal Control technicians ran through, and there was much screaming from the other side of frosted glass doors that sequestered the lobby. The walls were a calming shade of teal, but that didn't work when people kept shouting 'Don't let it kick you!' from the working area. The woman wrapped her arm around the teenager, who did not shake her off like usual.

A moment later the overworked nurse reappeared, smiled politely, and asked if the patient's mother had finished her admittance paperwork. 

"I will do that now," she said, and the two ladies smiled at each other sweetly. More Animal Control techs ran through. The mother put her head down and wouldn't make eye contact again.

 

"Did they make it?" asked Karen.

"They're there," said Floyd and shrugged. He was shivering under the brilliant Australian sun, and his eyes couldn't yet see through the brightness. 

"So it's just us."

"You ready to go back to the Empire?"

She didn't reply as they walked south towards ominous Uluru.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	22. Chapter 22

22

Of all the bizarre moments of awkward conversation, the short trek across from the crash site to hotel was the worst. 

"Are you going to get guns and stuff?" asked Karen. 

Desert grasses grew in tight clusters tens of centimeters wide with meters of near barren reddish soil between. When kissed by the wind the blades would slash and grab. The walkers cut away from the highway to the west so they walked due south towards Uluru and the jutting tower of the Empire, and the grass density increased. Beetles watched them pass. The sky was a shear dome of blue unbroken by clouds, watching them through the sun. It was close to noon, hot and still as inside an oven.

"When we're closer. I don't want to get stopped carrying a bazooka, but I'm going to want a bazooka," explained Floyd. "Notice how much vegetation there is for a place that just got swarmed by locusts?"

"Yes. They were magic locusts. We knew that."

"I'm just saying there's confirmation of the magic locust idea."

"Was it in question?"

Floyd looked sideways at her. "You're awfully trusting. You get told of magicians and missions from God, and you don't bat an eye. You don't even need proof to back it up."

"But there is proof. The dark place with the skulls. You can travel to places by drawing them. A plague of locusts blotted out the sun, and yet there's still grass. Why would I be surprised that additional proof supports the preceding theory?" she replied, weaving around waving vegetation. She looked at the scythe she'd taken from the Mantis and the compared it to the spinifex grass. 

"Because you've got one week of evidence for this, and twenty odd years of evidence that doesn't support this at all!" exclaimed Floyd, moving to her other side in case she started swinging. "My entire life I've never met a magician, never met anyone who could create from drawings, and I know you haven't either. But we have one crazy week, and I admit it's a really crazy week, and now you take as situation normal sorcery and biblical plague. You don't think that shows a certain lack of grounding?"

"But we're still in that week! Floyd, we're walking across the desert to fight a kidnapper. We're literally on a mission from God. Why wouldn't I take demonstrated magic as the new normal?" Karen stopped and stared at the cluster of grass, taking the scythe in a two handed grip. It was weighted weird, off balance, and once swung tried to keep swinging. She wiggled her hands and tried to get comfortable.

"Let's get further from the road," said Floyd.

"I want to get used to this thing."

"Yeah, but let's do it further from the road. Cutting the grass is illegal in some parks."

Karen turned at looked at him. Floyd tried to shoo her towards the looming rock.

"Have you also noticed there really aren't a lot of people here? Ayer's Rock is one of Australia's big tourist draws. There's like no people. There's no one on the roads." She tried to point beyond him, as Floyd had moved to her east side to push her west, but in turning she got the scythe swinging. It moved slow and lazily, reaping a dense cluster of spinifex. The grass waited until a hint of wind to tumble. 

Floyd threw himself clear and hit the dirt prone.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Don't swing that at me. It's evil."

"Don't be such a baby."

"Do NOT swing that at me!" he yelled and got cautiously to a crouch.

"Floyd-"

"Put the death-scythe down!"

"Floyd-"

"Karen! Death-scythe down!"

"I'll do it, but remember this next time you criticize me for taking this new situation at face value."

Floyd wiggled his head side to side. "I'm prepared to discuss that after you put that down."

They argued until deciding to walk further from the road and towards the big rock before having their conversation. Karen thought about calling him a big baby, but didn't, and Floyd hemmed over her sudden exhibition of faith. Instead they shot each other suspicious glances and frowns as they walked. 

Large mantises, close to 10 cm tall, swarmed out of the cut grass and scuttled free, heading for other tufts. They were pale white with silver forelegs and gray markings on the belly and head, large bodied with thick segments and unusually powerful mandibles. Moments after they appeared they had vanished into the foliage.

 

They cut around to the east side of Uluru so Karen could familiarize herself with the scythe. When they got there, they found the remains of buildings, mostly flattened and left to return to nature, built close to the rock. Having a choice of either going far into the desert or closer to the looming stone they argued until realizing they were both arguing for proximity to the rock and against each other. They moved closer to the stone.

It was now almost noon. The scythe was a bizarre weapon, clearly a functional tool weaponized for some unknown reason, but Karen felt strongly that it would be useful. This Floyd did not argue. He caught a cat-nap while she toyed with it, and when she woke him up, they talked about where they would go from there. Obviously back to the Empire, but exactly where and how was open to discussion.

"Remember we're not looking for this Musterman lady," said Floyd, chewing on grass. "She's Martin's problem, and he's not here. We're looking for this Karesh Ni, and I've got no idea what that's about."

"We don't know who Karesh Ni is-" said Karen.

"If it's a person," interjected Floyd.

"-their motivations, actions, or purposes-"

"Which must be bad, because God told us to stop them, but they could be scowling at puppies bad or unleashing the third plague bad."

"-where they are, or who their allies and enemies are," finished Karen in a rush to get the words out uninterrupted.

"We're their enemies. We know where we are," said Floyd.

They were talking among many stalks of cut grass, and Karen worked out a shoulder harness assembly for the scythe. Using it, she put the weapon away and just walked away from Floyd before he could say anything else. He followed obligingly.

Once they were gone mantises scurried from the tumbled foliage and spread out eastward.

"We're going to go around the rock," said Karen, looking ahead and not at Floyd. "We'll skirt the stone to avoid tourists-"

"Hey, Jack! Tsup, dude? Listen, we're heading across Ayer's and Karen's got a big-ass scythe, so we're trying to stay hidden. How do we get to the Empire?" asked Floyd into his phone behind her.

Karen stopped walking and twitched.

"Right, right. Cool. Thanks, man. Hey listen, you haven't set off the smoke alarms or anything? That's fine, I needed some fans anyway. Oh, really? Nice. Cool. Later." Floyd hung up. He reported, "He says he bought some fans. It's good, 'cause that fixative I like needs to vent, and I keep forgetting buy some. He also said he towelled our doors, so smoke can't get into our rooms. Good thinking, eh?" 

Karen stilled herself. "Did he say how we get to the Empire?"

"Oh, yeah. There's a hiddenish pathway south of us. He says look for a dry gorge. It's like super hidden though, so be careful you don't fall."

"Good," said Karen, and turned hard to her left. She strode forcefully through the brush with the sun above and at her back until she tumbled face first into a ditch.

"Damn. That is hidden," observed Floyd behind her.

Karen did not kill him. She managed to not even kill herself with the immense blade hanging over her neck. Instead she got up, smiled sweetly, and helped him down. Once in the hidden path they walked along a faded set of tire tracks, well travelled but kicked over with dirt, that lead right to the base of the stone itself.

"Oh, Jack also said stop making him out to be God. He knows it was just a figure of speech, but he says it's important."

They stopped at the edge of Ayers Rock, where the seeming monolith twisted deceptively over a narrow way in. It wasn't exactly a tunnel, but there was rock between them and the sky.

"Who said that?" asked Karen over her shoulder, staring at the faded motorcycle tracks going in and the rock above. She looked back at their tracks, which were plainly visible in the pathway, and the rock that looked featureless over the gulch. The sides overhung so that one could step over it without noticing. 

"Martin, I think. Jack was just making a point of it."

"Interesting. Floyd, do you think this is a trap?" She turned and looked at him.

"A trap? Where? The secret pathway under the mysterious boulder that no one else has discovered even though this is, like, the most famous boulder in the world?" asked Floyd.

Karen looked at him for several silent moments, finally admitting. "I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not."

Instead of replying Floyd reached down and drew in the sandy dirt with his finger. Moments later he pulled up a purple top-hat with "Sarcastic" written in sequins and sparklers, lit the sparklers as he put it on his head, and stood there with arms folded. He never changed his deadpan expression.

Karen punched the stupid hat, grabbed him by the collar, and dragged him into the tunnel. 

"I have the greatest superpower ever," he said as they went. 

 

The pathway wound right and left, plunging deeper into the ground and gaining depth as the stone above gained mass. She took the scythe off her back and readied it, but nearly banged the stone walls of the now defile-like crevice. She put it back on her back and tried to move, but stopped after a few testing lunges. The scythe came off again, and Karen looked at it, with an irritated expression. She formed and discarded several ideas, and was left looking at Floyd.

"Would you carry this?" she asked with obvious reluctance.

"Sure."

"Be careful, it's very sharp."

"Yeah, I got it."

"Okay, but it has a tendency to swing-"

"Karen, I've been telling you to be careful with the death-scythe since you got it. I'm even more wary of it than you are. I've got it."

With a look like indigestion she allowed the artist to take the weapon from her. He pivoted it under one arm so the blade hung by his feet, pointing behind him, and the handle pointed away from his body. He looked completely relaxed.

Karen had not thought to carry it like that. She shrugged and lowered herself to a crouch, stalking forward.

Several meters ahead the crevice turned sharply left where the ceiling rose, and ambient light bounced off the sandstone overhead. The otherwise still air fluttered with hints of eddy currents. Karen guessed there was a large chamber beyond. Those three steps were distinct moments in time, moments that she paid attention to like the opening moves of a fight, bell still ringing and corner-squads yelling encouragement. Fine dirt smooshed under her feet but didn't make noises. At the end of the third step she waited, and let her eyes adjust to a miniscule change in light. Floyd was a cautious distance behind her, watching the way they came. He signaled he was ready. She nodded and got low to peak around the corner.

A man, six meters tall, lay bound to the rock with manacles of some forgotten metal. A fresh wound at his side exposed his ribs, and it had just recently ceased to bleed. Dried blood across his hip still scabbed. The man was reading a hard-backed volume that vanished in his immense hands, flipping pages with his thumb as he did so. There was a pile of broken machinery near his feet, including a peculiar wire-driven saw. 

Karen thought for a few seconds and then walked boldly into the chamber.

The titan looked up from his book when she appeared, his face as blank and eyes as searching as hers. There seemed to be many things he thought of saying but didn't. Instead her closed the book between thumb and little finger, put it in a notch in the stone, and waited. 

He was gaunt, almost emaciated. If he'd come to her gym, she would have refused him as a client unless he also signed up for nutrition counselling (to say nothing of the gaping hole in his side). Karen's eyes flashed over the chamber, finding no threats, and noticing a patch of sky so blue it looked fake. For all that the heavens had been hidden for only a few minutes, she lusted after them, wanting to see the sun and clouds overhead again. The rock was suddenly oppressively heavy. 

"I'm Karen Williams. What is your name?" she asked. Her eyes checked the corners for snipers.

"Most recently I've been called Mathy," said the titan, and Karen chose not to mention the evasion.

"Pleased to meet you, Mathy. You're injured."

"It's an old injury."

"Looks fresh."

"It is."

Karen nodded, slow as time, and gave up nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	23. Chapter 23

23

Erica Mustermann sat in her office and raged. There was a terminal open before her, showing nothing more than a login prompt, and it sat untouched as the woman made claws of her fists and tugged at her upper lip. Her hands shook, her knuckles were white, and her fingers turned pale, yet the long, fine nails barely scraped her mouth. Her lips began to bleed, and she didn't notice the blood slide into her mouth, stain her teeth, and form a pool around her tongue. She swallowed unconsciously. Erica stared through the screen, through the firewalls around her office, and thought the columns of hot racks beyond. Vents cycled open and closed.

The office was barren. The walls were insulated, fire and blast resistant, four times redundant steel-aerogel cells. There was one desk, fire-proof plastic that melted at 800 C, a terminal, keyboard, and mouse, and a detached landline phone. Everything was wired to the servers outside. Her chair was as comfortable as a blast resistant, fire-proof, armored hard-plastic chair could be. A single air shaft in the roof matched the single air shaft in the floor, both independent of and routed away from the huge air shafts of the computing hall. One didn't provide air for three petaflops of computers under a desert with ducting a human being could fall through. Sometimes field mice got through the hidden grates in the desert. The little fluffballs fell a soccer pitch, landed unharmed, and then she'd make the Serpent fish them out.

The Serpent was in the sacrificial hall, sulking. Erica stared death through a point in a wall in that direction. The inside of the walls were blank grey, unpainted steel, except for one printed photograph of Martin Wilson taped to a wall. It was a cheap, copy-kiosk print of his Facebook profile, five years old, and it stared back at her. Erica didn't look at it. The point beyond which the Serpent would be was exactly ninety degrees from Martin, so if she glowered perfectly, Martin was beyond her peripheral vision. 

A red light clicked on her phone, and she answered, looking down. Her blood had etched fractals in her nail polish.

"Empire Resorts and Convention Center, Mika Scholz," she said.

"What is going on down there?" demanded Alfred Morris. "There's a black stain over the resort you can see from orbit!"

"Are you in orbit?" asked Erica.

"No, but I'm looking at the satellite feed we hire from the frogs."

"Then it's a day old. We had a locust swarm. They're very natural, if unpleasant. They escape from Argyle's Sustainable Protein farm to the north."

"There is no sustainable protein farm to the north! You told us to sue them into a hole in the ground. We put Argyle's mother out of the assisted living home onto the street! He closed shop to take care of her."

"Then he probably released the grasshoppers he had been keeping. They're indigenous insects. They thrive in the Outback, but they'll pass on." Erica shrugged knowing he couldn't see her, so the apathy of the gesture could ease into her voice.

"The lake turned to blood!"

"It's not a real lake. It's a temporary lake that comes and goes with the rain. It's dry now, so you're looking at old sediment build-up. Is it white and shiny?"

Alfred was quiet on the other end of the line, and she heard clicking. He said, "Yes," in an unwilling tone.

"Salt build up. Amadeus is a dry lake. Mr Morris, things are fine down here. The locusts are the equivalent of bad weather, and we've allocated for them. We'll lose a few days of construction, but that's already baked into the schedule. We should end this month a day ahead. How is the NW Territories litigation?"

He went silent, returning calmer. "It's come to a complete stop. We chewbaccaed them and moved for a venue change, they argued, and we lost, but we alleged estoppel and they're fighting a rearguard action to change back. Now they're fighting to keep it in Sydney, but we want to go back to Brussels. It's a complete logjam. We leaked some documents that made the Brussels magistrate think the Sydney magistrate called her a c-word, and they're having a jurisdictional pissing match."

"Interesting," observed Erica.

"That's why we like this judge. We had someone else tell the judge to calm down and stop acting irrationally. Called her a cultural imperialist. She reacted beautifully. NW can't even present their arguments. Six months before we get venue finalized, at the earliest."

"Beautiful work," she said. "You've done wonders. We're scheduled to be complete by then, and we'll have reservations. Are you prepared to file suit in the US on behalf of the customers who would have their plans cancelled if NW wins?"

"Yes, we're already working on that. We just need more financial commitments."

"And I will get them for you. Now, Mr Morris, do you have any other concerns before I return to the hotel?"

There was a long, unpleasant silence. 

"No, I'll leave you to it."

"Thank you, Mr Morris. Tell the partners I'm very pleased with your work, and you all have my highest compliments."

"Thank you, Ms Scholz. I'll talk to you soon."

"I look forward to it," she replied and hung up.

She stared at the phone and cradle. There was something alluring to physically hanging up that a touch-screen slider could not replicate. She considered an old flip phone. Signal down here was non-existent, so it wasn't an issue. Erica dismissed the thought with her eyebrows, and noticed her mouth was full of blood. She licked her lips, swallowed, and looked at her nails.

"I've got to stop that," she said out loud and looked up.

That put her gaze directly on Martin. She smiled at him with bloody teeth and picked up the phone again.

"Hey, girl. This is Beth Vance." Pause. "It has been! How have you been?" Pause. "No." Pause. "No." Pause. "Oh, you definitely should." Long pause.

"I think you should. No, it isn't unreasonable. I agree completely. Listen, Liz, I'm so sorry, but I'm pressed for time. I need your professional services. Rawr. Can you get me a cell location? Thank you." She read my phone number and waited. "That's too bad. Would you keep on it, and send me when you get the next hit? Thanks. While I have you, would you run another few numbers? Thanks." She read Karen and Floyd's numbers, both had been listed as contact numbers when they'd filed for their room reservation, and waited again.

"Oh, that's too bad, I- excuse me?" she asked.

"I said I don't have their locations, but I can get the call history on the first one. Give me a moment," replied Elizabeth Flintwood on the other end from her office in Seoul. Her office was much nicer than Erica's. Floor to ceiling windows looked out on the city, and the internal walls had oceanscapes, several stills of Seoul National University, a portrait of American Air Force Colonel Flintwood looking sternly to the right, another portrait of a demur Korean woman smiling back, and between them a group photo of the Colonel (then captain) holding squealing two year-old Liz upside down while the woman looked concurrently worried and pleased. There was also a picture of a young man pouting around a cigarette, but he was covered in angry tape. They were engaged.

"That first number's received a call recently, but I've got no location information. Cannot be resolved. Interesting, he shouldn't be able to get calls. System glitch. I've got the calling metadata. Copy this number-" 

Erica did.

"That's the calling number, and it's from Australia...in...a...place... where they need new servers...they need to feed their squirrels and get them new cages, there is no reason, no reason, for cell recall to take this long. Absolutely no reason. Girl, Australia is like a third world hell-hole for information technology."

"Oh?" said Erica with infinite blandness. Liz didn't notice.

"Yeah, it is, they- here. Got the tower number. Want the coords?"

"Please."

Liz read them off. Erica guestimated they were between Ayer's Outpost and Yulara. She nodded.

"And the other call is outbound, okay I don't know how they established an outbound transmission with no location data, to a landline in the US, NYC, baby I love New York, Staten Island. Want it?"

"Please."

Liz gave Erica Karen's land line number and address. Erica nodded to herself as she took it down and confirmed to be sure.

"Interesting. How long was that last call?"

"Less than sixty seconds. The local carrier is still in the stone age, and bills minute increments. Do you want me to dig?"

"No, thank you. Don't trouble yourself," replied Erica, clicking her nails on the desk. "When were they?"

"Just recently. It's not even dawn in New York yet."

"I see. Now girl, I have to go, but take care of yourself."

"Later, bitch!" sang Liz, and Erica, as she often did, looked askance at the phone before hanging up. She paid Liz in bitcoin.

That done Erica sat and thought. She stroked her pursed lips, careful not to cut herself again, and stared first at the ceiling before turning and gazing at the wall between her and the sacrificial room. The Serpent should still be there. She stared until with a thought she glanced over at the hanging picture, and then lost herself in thought again. Her eyes narrowed and hardened, and she put her hands to the desk. Tense movements of her fingers scored the desk surface, scraping curls of rigid plastic until the fringe of them interrupted her movements. Irritated, she looked down and yanked the streamers off. Some were thick enough to resist her efforts, so she had to put her nails to them and cut.

She called someone else.

"Emerald, this is Sapphire. I need some contract workers."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	24. Chapter 24

24

"Lovely day," said Karen.

"It is, sometimes," maybe agreed Mathy.

"This may be one of those times."

"Time passes with greater regularity than its inhabitants, who sometimes run, sometimes plod, and think it is constant time that hurries and slows with their indecision." Mathy shrugged.

"But people measure time by their own lives, and it cannot be that their lives and time are the same. If so, there would be no point in measuring them," said Karen.

"Oh my God, would you two shut up!?" demanded Floyd and walked around the corner. "Oh shit, giant."

Karen glared at him indignantly, while Mathy breath-laughed. Floyd stared up the face of rock. His eyes were slightly glazed, and he leaned on the scythe with a spliff in his lips. "You two have been doing that for, like, an hour. It's weather. You I get, because you're chained to a big-ass rock, and you've got nothing better to do. You," he pointed at Karen. "Need to stop trying win conversations."

"I do not," Karen muttered.

Floyd did not argue. He looked at the bound titan and asked, "Want to get high?"

"Thank you, but I must respectfully decline." 

"That isn't bait. I'm high as shit right now. I got you."

"As a guest, you overcome my generosity as a host, and I am honored by it. It shames me I must decline, but I ask you to forgive my indiscretions."

"No worries. Now, giant rock dude, where are we?"

"You stand at the foot of the rock of Tartarus, heart of the underworld and gateway between it and the land of the living," said the titan.

"That's some shit. Why are you here?"

"I'm bound to Tartarus until it or the reigns of heaven fall. As I, so it. My manacles cannot be broken by the artifice of man, and my torment is eternal. Escape was promised, but that was falsehood."

"That looks like it hurt." Floyd pointed at Mathy's wound.

"It does, and I have no succor."

"That sucks. Want some?"

"Again, I must decline."

"Right. You said that. My bad."

"You are forgiven."

"See?" Floyd demanded of Karen. "Progress."

"Shut up. Why are you bound to a rock with an unhealing wound?" asked Karen.

"For crimes I will not repent."

"Sucks!" sang-yelled Floyd. Karen gave a more guarded but sympathetic shrug.

"By any chance do either of you have any books?" asked the titan.

"No," admitted Floyd, but Karen checked her phone.

"Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, basically everything Emily Bronte, what do you want?" she replied, scrolling.

Mathy stared at her in shock. "I have heard of none of those."

"I've got no signal, or I'd get more. Do you want anything in particular? I've got a lot of fiction."

"Oh, fiction. I've never read fiction."

Karen looked up from her phone. "You've never read fiction?"

Floyd also stared at Karen. "When are you reading all this fiction?" he demanded. "You work, like, twelve hours a day!"

"On the exercise bike! Do you know what twenty miles on an exercise bike is? I'll give you a hint, it's Bronte time!" snapped Karen.

"Pfft."

"Would you share your fiction?" asked Mathy in a strange tone. "I cannot repay you, and you already overmatch my hospitality."

"Um, sure," said Karen and began picking her way up the rock face towards him.

"I don't suppose you can tell me how to stop sucking at landscapes?" asked Floyd rhetorically, staring at the burgundy rocks in despair. Down here the single red of the stone was painted by innumerable shadows, the diffuse reflections of sunlight falling through cracks above, and hidden, deeper pits that ate light. Floyd fingered the curse chalk in his pocket.

"Yes," said Mathy.

"Wait, what?" Floyd's head snapped to the titan.

"Your colloquialism addresses a desire to improve your skill rendering landscapes, correct?" asked Mathy.

"Yes! Exactly that!"

"Yes, I can help you. Come. I have seascapes at my hand." Mathy indicated the notch where he stored Pato's books.

Floyd went up the rock like a mountain goat.

 

Several hours later Karen was asleep was Floyd and Mathy watched the sunlight retreat up the wall. 

"You know this already," said Mathy, tired head leaning against the rock. "That you seem confused surprises me. You, of a stark austerity of style, are trying to draw too much. Look at your rendition of Karen." The titan nodded his head towards a prominence of rock where Karen's face stood in white chalk. She had posed, but that was gone. Four lines made her face and two more for framing hair and the M of her top hang on her shoulders, and that was it. "See how you caught her exhaustion? By drawing less, you conveyed more."

Floyd looked pained. "I guess."

Mathy indicated a different fist of stone. "Turn your attention again to the opposing face. You have seventeen lines for a single play of shadow-"

"But the play of shadow is what I want!" interrupted Floyd. 

"You caught shadow without so much chalk before. Where is that rendition of the shadows on Karen?"

"It's- Um, oh, it fell. Hold on."

Floyd scurried down the stone to the rubbish pile at the foot, and sorted through the broken machinery. Finding an angle board for a cross-cut saw with another picture of Karen, this time her profile, he scuttled back up. 

Mathy looked between the cutting board, Floyd holding it like an easel, and another rock prominence that held a mishmash of lines and fading. "You have stripped out what you think you saw, and left only what is. Notice the difference between the two, the face and the stone. You know this. Your art is a microcosm of your mind. In the face, you draw only what you see. In the terrain, you draw what you think. But when you draw terrain, it is in your mind that you only draw what you see, and thus you are not drawing as you draw faces, you draw as you think you draw faces. Complexity begets itself. Draw less."

Floyd's own face went through a dozen angry expressions ranging from about-to-shout to mild disagreement and back, pendulum swinging so fast between extremes they flicked like broken frames in a movie. "I know all that," he said eventually in low discontent.

"You demonstrate it magnificently."

The last dot of direct sunlight crossed the boundary of the roof, and now they sat in the warm ambience of collateral sunshine. 

"No!" argued Floyd, but when Mathy waited, he could not elucidate why.

The sullen silence did not break. The titan looked from Floyd, grumbling and adjusting, retreating, and maneuvering in his mind to find an angle of attack, to Karen, curled up in a divot in the hot rock, and smiled. He leaned his great head back. In the east the stars were coming out, but the western sky was still white-ish blue. The chamber was pleasantly warm. Mathy turned to Floyd, who had his mouth open and finger raised to punctuate an argument, and the little artist instead growled and tried to flank whatever he had to say. The titan looked pleased and turned so Floyd could argue with himself in a semblance of privacy. He did not get much time.

"Another visitor," said Mathy.

Floyd looked up and saw the Spider in the entry-way, holding the scythe of Death.

"Karen. Karen. Karen!" 

"Wha-hey-" muttered Karen. She tried to bolt upright but instead slumped upright groggily. Once she noticed the Spider, who was smirking at her and twirling the scythe, she looked around like a matching scythe should be at her side. There wasn't one.

"Hello, my guest. Be welcome to the Hall of Rock, Under the Rock," said Mathy.

"Found you," gloated the Spider. "All them looking. The big boss hunting. I found you." The Spider did a little dance.

Karen and Floyd looked at each other. They remembered. They turned to the Spider, and Karen wiped the last of the sweat from her eyes. She was still tired and thirsty, but she bounced on the balls of her feet and stretched her back.

She looked at the scythe. "You know, I had one just like that," she added and shot wicked side-eye at Floyd. 

The little artist shrugged and made faces.

"Do not fault yourselves. That weapon is full of treachery," cautioned Mathy. 

Floyd suddenly shook himself, drew a huge gun on the ground, and pulled it out of the image. "This isn't. Baby understands."

The Spider winked and stepped back around the corner out of sight.

Karen looked at the dim pathway. While the top of their alcove was still in day, the walls descended into nightfall as they went down. At the base, where the Spider's footprints marked the sand the same way Karen's and Floyd's had earlier, the chamber was in deep evening. Beyond in the narrow cuts that lead outwards it would be midnight. 

"Let's not go after him," said Karen.

"Agreed. I'll trump us out of here."

"No, we can't do that."

"What? Why not?" demanded Floyd.

Karen looked at him like he was stupid, and with barest subtlety, jerked her head sideways at Mathy.

Floyd winced. "Oh. Yeah. Right." He hung his head and hunched his shoulders. "Sorry. Sorry."

"You know that one?" asked Mathy as if that exchange hadn't happened.

"We've met," said Karen with a lot of teeth, and they told him the story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/1/2016


	25. Chapter 25

25

"You spammed HEM with poisonous frogs," said the Rooster. "They're a little upset with you. And you asked for blood-spiders, conjuration, instructed to stop bleeding, which is a rather," he played with the word in his mouth, "unpleasant thing to need. Blauc said you were on a priority one regarding a supposed resurrection. At Uluru. Dr. Wilson, I am merely the first of several people awfully curious about what exactly you were doing."

"I like the frogs. They don't get tampered with."

The Rooster withheld judgement. "Perhaps, but have you considered alternatives? Ravens? Owls? Anything non-toxic? Hamsters?"

"The owls would eat the hamsters. Owls wouldn't eat the frogs. At least, not more than once."

He elected not to reply. Dealing with the Rooster was a patronizing experience, one I wasn't keen on.

I hadn't gotten the long, gentle process waking up in St Mary's. A monitor on my arm started beeping like hell itself was coming for me, jolting me into painful wakefulness, and rattled and hissed. Aoki, the shift nurse who rushed in, explained it was almost certainly a false alarm. 

"What, like bad dreams or something?" I asked her. 

"Yes, but also indigestion or you may have rolled over and impinged circulation where a probe is. We have to have alarms because if it is something, you would want us to check, but better-safe-than-sorry may make it hard for you to sleep." She smiled. "All the more reason to get better quickly and go home! Now, I'll let your visitor in."

"Visitor?"

She smiled again, nodding. She was cute in a friendly way, but unapproachable because she was always busy. Beyond anything else, hospital stays are shockingly boring, and whenever anyone came in, I tried to draw out a conversation. I rarely succeeded. The night-shift lady had given me an interesting run-down on the relationship between shifting demographics and rents, from which I'd learned she'd been an econ major until she admitted to herself she hated it, but most of the others were too overworked to hold a conversation. I hadn't been expecting visitors. To find out I had one was disturbing.

"Good morning, Dr Wilson," said the Rooster when the nurse held the door for him. He sat down, put an old felt hat on the beside table, and waited. She left us alone.

"What are you doing here?" I demanded.

"Just talking."

"I don't have a contract on me!"

"I wouldn't be here if you did."

That was less reassuring the more I thought about it.

We had the bit about frog-spamming HEM while I sized him up. The Rooster wore a charcoal grey suit that was almost black, dark blue shirt, and a pale sky-blue tie. It gleamed at his neck. He looked like he hadn't shaved in a few days. Above that he had a common face with high cheek-bones, brown hair and eyes, and wire-rim glasses. The hat looked old and worn. He wore a mechanical watch with an Italian flag on the side.

"So, tell me about your day," he continued with airy pressure. 

I stared at him for a long while and in a hit of intuition, realized he was packing. The suit was perfectly tailored but rode differently on his left side. He'd gestured with his right hand, so it was crossbody draw, small caliber. Guns might be prohibited here, but unless they searched that wouldn't stop him. Why were Luddites always willing to carry guns? They always drew the line at electronics. Magical society needed more clockwork technophobes: sundials and swords, everything else was out. 

Come to think of it, the wheel was unpleasantly modern in the grand scheme of things. Give me a team of Egyptians hauling rocks on a sled.

"Can I interest you in building a pyramid?" I asked.

"Not likely."

"Didn't think so. What's it to me? I'll file my reports on time, but advance warning is non-trivial."

The Rooster waited. "Dr Wilson, perhaps you improperly understand the gravity of your situation."

"I doubt it."

He rationed out the energy to blink and said, "I have your rack."

I was all set to argue about whether or not I should get his pay for the Kim contract, and he took the words right out of me. The air was a silent blanket that refused to let me speak. The Rooster had never leaned forward, reclining in the uncomfortable chair with an aura of complete confidence. He waited. I stared at him.

He hummed a few bars, and I forgot how to breathe.

"How did you do that?"

"It can be done," he said with a shrug. He started talking gently, beginning with what an old salesman's trick to bring the mark along. "Your file isn't open access, but the contents aren't hard to get. You self-initiated in prison as a message to our agent Tibs. Immediately afterwards you got in a feud with Alpine Tabernus and spent six months in solitary. Interesting case. The merits of your arrest are bizarre, the merits of your pardon stranger, and the efficacy of your self-initiation non-existent as Tibs swooped in to pick you up right after, sequestering you in the middle of the ocean until farming your contract out to IE. 

"Like most of us, you devoted your efforts to overcoming the basic problem that constructs are slow to write and incredibly tricky to compose. No other form of speech has as much dependence on when and where it's composed to determine the basic factors of its replication. That was how Tibs got you. Tibs showed you how to rack.

"You never would have figured a rack out. Don't deny it. No one figures out how to rack. Self initiation is almost unheard of, but no one figures out a rack. What possible element could you keep in your mind all the time, active, moving, and yet have it remain with you through distractions and opposition? Who comes up with that?"

The Rooster innocently raised an eyebrow, a false admission of defeat, and hummed the same bars over again.

"Especially a personalized one."

"Sing the whole thing," I demanded.

"Does it echo in your memory? Do you want to remember it so bad you're tricking yourself into hearing it? Is your mind right now exchanging melodies for rhythms, playing with notes while you try to recall the song that stayed caught in your head for years, that you could hang constructs from like bits of lyric, that fit the warp and weft of magic itself? I've been listening to mine since the day of initiation, and I've never stopped loving it. I don't know what I'd do if I lost it, if some act of power kicked it out of my head. That would be terrible."

The Rooster shrugged again, and hummed the same few bars of the introduction. It built, two low notes, a middle one rising to a high, and soared towards a drop- The Rooster stopped and raised an eyebrow. 

I stared at him in anguish.

"Close your mouth; you look like an idiot. Tell me about Uluru, and I will sing you your rack."

"No," I whispered.

The Rooster sighed. "Martin, let me tell you a little something about magic. It's just music. The pragmatic differences are far greater than the theoretical ones, and that's why Blauc brought you on. Mere recruitment of apt subjects isn't as important to us as you might think. We tell all new subject you're special to give you a sense of belonging, but..." He shrugged. "The biggest difference between sorcery and music is the cost of experimentation. Musically, you can always put a new set of notes together and see what happens. Magically, there are regimes where experimentation is very unhealthy. Put a construct together wrong, or even execute it wrong when it's put together right and you get Immolant Petrification. That's how Kim went."

He waited for a response, but I didn't give him one. I wasn't surprised he read the Kim report.

"It's not a bad way to go. Immolant Petrification converts fluid in the organs to lava, so it's quick. In Kim's case he likely didn't feel anything before he died. Other than the fire, of course. Tire foam, Mr Wilson? Mundane and brutal. You're an empiricist at heart. But those false dichotomies are where people lose sight of the threads between music and sorcery. Music rewards practice, yes, but also an open mindset, willingness to experiment, a certain emotionality of work. Magic does not. You need to be picky, cautious, and methodical, lest you do something wrong. You, Mr Wilson, are the latter. Virtually everyone who self initiates is. You have to be methodological enough to gain power, learn to use it, and not immolate yourself. You may have been called anal-retentive as a kid. It's fine. It kept you from exploding.

"But as a self-initiator, you'll never experiment enough to learn your own rack. You just aren't that carefree. The very things that keep you alive leave you too wary to put enough of yourself into music.

"Mr Wilson, no one else has access to your rack. You self initiated in solitary. Whatever song you heard, no one else ever will. You'd been in solitary for months, so in all likelihood, you were a little insane. The walls broke down. You were probably creating imaginary friends, all while following the technical path that kept your own internals functioning. Your cognitive dissonance must have been amazing. Then that undue imprisonment scandal broke, you got quietly released, and Tibs swooped in to help you put the pieces together. 

"Tibs, unfortunately, is dead. Whatever you knew has been wiped from your head by methods that, frankly, I don't understand but would very much like to have explained. You have no recourse save devoting hours to each construct and every invocation at the mercy of where you are and what you're doing. Your own power, silenced."

He hummed four bars again and waited. 

Between us was a battle of wills. I was alone and weak in my buttless hospital gown, and he was composed, sliding a plastic knife between his fingers. It had blunt, overdone serrations, and he held the haft between index finger and thumb, pressing the blunt tip with his other hand. His fingers slid along the blade until they almost touched, and then he spun the knife round and repeated. He didn't stare me down, but he waited, his manner indicating my silence would no longer induce him to speak.

"You know," I said and paused, marshalling my thoughts. "Someone sent a message to me while I was in the field. Sent me back to Ayer's Outpost. Sent me to find out what was up with Mustermann. Didn't ask for any paperwork. Not even a budget request, but a hundred k advance and priority upgrade. You've met Edgar, right? My boss loves him some paperwork. He's very professional, and that means consistent."

There was a pencil on the bedside table with a newspaper opened to the crossword. Nurse Whitney, really pleasant woman, fussed too much, had left me that and a mechanical sharpener, a single blade on a rotatable housing that spit out pencil shavings, when I'd asked for a game to keep me occupied. I put the sharpener to the pencil.

"Mustermann knew. She knew too much. She knew details. She knew history. She knew things we don't tell people."

The Rooster suddenly flicked his glance around the room. He saw the shades pulled across the glass windows, and the hanging curtains pulled around the other bed. He looked from me to the pencil tip. It was murderously sharp.

"Tibs knew the rack, but as you said, he's dead. But Mustermann says she can raise the dead."

"Mr Wilson-"

"Four members of Alpine Tabernus jumped me in a yard fight. You'll have to open the door to run, with your back to me-"

"I bugged your office," he interrupted. 

I blinked. "What?"

"You hum. I bugged your office. When you're bored you hum."

Somehow the pencil had come out of the sharpener, and I held it in a stabbing grip, point down from my hand. Instead of using it, I was thinking. I was trying to remember if I'd ever searched my office for bugs. Would I find one if I did? My office is cleaner than my apartment, but under the desk or behind the drawers there are spaces less observed than the dark side of the moon. The Rooster didn't make any sudden movements. His hands were visible and the plastic knife down. The gun hadn't appeared from inside his coat.

"I don't know if I believe that," I said.

"Of course not, because you don't believe anyone is as intelligent as you. You're a bit of a prick. I knew you'd never bother to look, so I bugged your office the day you moved in. You hum, and you used to hum your rack," said the Rooster, voice flat.

"Excuse me," said Hank from behind the curtain. He pushed it open with a little stick. "Wizard-guys, can I intrude?"

The Rooster and I shot him hard looks.

Hank was on his back, his lower body hidden under many blankets. He moved his upper body exclusively. "Sorry, mates, but I can simplify your problems. Martin, you do hum. You were humming the whole time we were in the car together, driving out from Sydney. If that's this rack you were talking about, I can hum it back to you right now."

I fast blinked three times at him.

"Right," he said. "Now, other wizard-guy, you're being a little unfriendly to Martin. I'll make a deal with you. If you fix my legs, I'll confirm the song you've got, so Martin will tell you the truth. Deal?"

The Rooster thought. "That's not a good deal. Martin will know the truth of the song when he hears-"

"I'll take it," I interjected.

The Rooster twitched. "What?"

"Fix his legs, give me my rack, I'll tell you what you want to know," I said.

Hank looked back and forth between us on the edge of hope while the Tragic Accidents operative tried to figure out my motivations. The Rooster squinted into my face. I schooled my expression to something generically idiotic and put the pencil down. With my other hand I snapped a few times.

"His legs. Get to it," I said.

"You do know that's going to take a little work?" suggested the Rooster, like one talking to a small child.

I made get-started motions, and Hank slumped back into his bed with a sigh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the revised order. 
> 
> 2/1/2016


	26. Chapter 26

26

The Rooster flicked his glance back and forth between us. Hank looked innocent and incapable. Being paralyzed from the waist down helped that impression, but the Rooster didn't bother to hide his suspicion. He thought hard, hard enough he wasn't wearing a poker face and simply eyed us down. 

"Drop your request for the Kim job," he said.

"I drop the Kim job and give you early access, you fix his legs, and between you give me my rack," I confirmed.

"Yes."

"Deal."

We didn't shake. 

He lifted both arms so his elbows stuck out like chicken wings and pulled his jacket open. The pistol grip said Kimber. Moving slowly he reached into a vest pocket and removed a plastic personal voice recorder. It was on the same side of his chest as the gun, and his hand nearly brushed it. No one spoke, and I barely breathed. Once the recorder was out he let his jacket flap shut. 

"Do you want headphones?" he asked.

"No, the nurse gave me some so I can watch TV." 

He put the recorder on the hard plastic meal tray and leaned back. I took it, watching his body language, and plugged it in. 

It was a MIDI, old digital beep-booping in eight bits, and it opened my head like a can-opener. I heard music that cannot be made. It pulled the instruments out of me, wrapped them up in old magic, and ran through my mind. Maybe eight, nine hours passed enraptured until three nurses yanked the door open with an emergency cart. Less than a minute had passed. 

"How are you feeling?" demanded Aoki as she rushed in to check my vitals. 

I pulled out one headphone. I was about to answer, but they mobbed me, sticking cold things on my arm, someone lifting up my eyelids, and someone else hitting the buttons. 

"He's seventy two, 130 over 80," announced someone looking at my monitor.

"Did you touch something?" demanded Aoki.

The soul of God. "Nope," I said. "False alarm?"

"Obviously. You're not dead."

"Anything wrong?"

"You must have touched something. All your vitals went down." Aoki's fast, sure fingers flicked over me, checking, connecting, testing. 

Pure infinity. "Nope. Didn't touch anything."

"Must have. It's in now."

I shrugged.

They bustled and fussed, but shortly left us alone, the room descending back into stillness. The tension had broken, though. I had heard enough. I'm not sure why he played a MIDI instead of a voice recording, but perhaps it gave the Rooster some paranoia level of defense. Maybe he meant to leave listening devices in my office. There could be several of them.

"All right, I'm convinced. How are you going to fix his legs?" I said.

"Distillate of Venus."

I blinked. "You're not going to do a Mending of the Riven Foot and Mind?"

"No, I'd have to cut him open and don't feel like writing on his spine."

"Good call." I couldn't very well argue with that if he didn't have, or wouldn't admit to having, an Eir Wand. How legal of him. "Hank, we got good news and bad news."

Hank didn't know what to make of that. I wonder what this looked like to him. "Yes?"

"You're going to walk again!" I shot him double finger guns.

"That would be good news," he agreed.

The Rooster interjected, "After Mr Wilson-" No one ever called me doctor. "-tells me what happened in Australia."

I frowned. "I'll call in my cancellation of the Kim request, but I'm not giving you a report. I'll do it once you give him the distillate."

"And I'm not willing to give you your rack back for a single Priority One."

"Fine. I'll tell you everything when he's having his seizures. I'll have to keep an eye on him anyway, and it will be your distillate, so you'll be around anyway."

"I'm not giving him one of my distillates," he replied, looking at me like I was crazy. "Do you think I'd let you have a link on me?"

I blinked a few times. I hadn't put that together. "Where did you get a distillate if you didn't make it?"

The Rooster shrugged.

"Interesting. We still need to get out of here. Hank, how paralyzed are you? Can you walk at all?" I asked.

"My legs don't work, mate!" yelled Hank, slipping back into his Australian accent. 

"His medical problems are not my negotiating problems," said the Rooster. "You tell me what I want to know, I give you the distillate. I've already given you your rack as a show of good faith."

I pursed my lips and swished my cheeks. I felt like I was giving up an advantage, but he had a point. My rack sang in my ears and head. "Fine."

"I don't see why I should have to wait if you already got your rack," muttered Hank. 

"Calm down, tiger. Your legs weren't amputated, your spine was just severed a little bit. You'll be fine." Then, to the Rooster, "You probably want me to tell you everything so you can hide how much you know, so we'll start when I got to Sydney. Hank was my driver."

The man in question grumbled, raised a hand, and went back to pouting over his distillate.

I told them just about everything. I was evasive about details on Karen and Floyd, which the Rooster observed but didn't comment on, but he was most interested in Erica. I told him all I could. He took notes in a moleskin pad but not many. When I was done he nodded, rose, and eyed the two of us dourly. 

We made the exchange for the distillate of Venus with less of a stare off than before. It was a small glass vial of a clear liquid, slightly more viscous than water, similar in consistency to coffee. Swirled it left a transparent residue on the glass. I gave it to Hank. "We need to get you a clear view of the sky before you drink that, at least Venus, and it's going to ping every alarm they have. But it's yours, so keep it."

He screwed around on the little tablet the hospital gave him. "Venus is up now!"

"Wait. Seriously, you're going to spaz out. Just hold on."

He argued, but I argued harder. We're doing sorcery here, and everyone acts like they know more than me.

Yes, exactly what I was doing to the medical staff, but I'm a legit sorceror!

"I can see it out the window," Hank muttered.

"Anything else?" I asked of the other magus.

"Kim," he replied.

"Do you mind if I do that while he's seizing?" I asked.

"That's fine. So long as you do." He didn't look concerned. 

I nodded. 

The Rooster walked out slowly, threading his way around the abundance of medical equipment so his back was never quite turned to either of us. I watched him go with my hands in plain sight. 

"See Venus? It's right there," said Hank, pointing out the window while he clutched the vial.

I looked. "That's a malfunctioning street light."

"It could be Venus."

"There's a billboard behind it."

"I want my legs, you yankee cunt!"

"Then stop screwing around and get smart!" I yelled back and slumped back against the hard mattress. I finally pulled the headphones out and drummed my fingers. That hadn't gone the way I expected. Why was he acting so weird?

The small voice recorder was still playing on the table, tinny beeps and boops coming through cheap hospital headphones. There was no way of knowing how many copies of it the Rooster had, and he was clearly less technophobic than he let on. That was a sword of Damocles he had on me, and I had nothing on him. In the old days wars had been declared for less. 

"He seemed scared of you," Hank observed.

"He isn't," I said. 

"I dunno," said Hank.

"Ever heard of Russian Roulette? It might be an Americanism."

"Everyone's heard of Russian Roulette," scoffed Hank.

"Fine. Would you play?"

"No," he replied, looking put off.

"Even with only one bullet between six chambers?"

"Yeah, nah. I don't want to die."

"There you go." I texted Floyd and Karen to see if they were still alive.

We of the Immaculate Eye were sophisticated and friendly now. I picked up my pencil and hit the button to page the nurse. Maybe they'd unplug me if I asked to go to the bathroom? 

The nursing staff was disinclined to unplug me. Something about, "Oh, you have traumatic brain injury," and "No, Martin, you have internal bleeding." Bunch of whiners. 

My phone rang. It was Karen.

"Can you hear me?" she asked.

"Obviously. Listen, I've had a doozy of a day-"

Karen interrupted. "We're underneath Ayer's Rock. We found Prometheus, he's real, he's bound, and he was giving Floyd art tips until he, Floyd, fell asleep. Now the Spider found us, and he's waiting outside."

"You had to just throw that down, didn't you?" I demanded. "I have feelings too, you know!"

"What are you babbling on about?"

"My feelings, Karen! Are you going to fight him?"

"Prometheus?"

"No, nimrod. The Spider."

Karen was silent for a long time. "He'll win."

"Are you-"

"I've seen it. I'm not sure how certain I am, but that's that." She sounded resigned.

"Any chance you're just tricking yourself into believing you can't win because of nerves?"

"It's the same thing. Trust me, I do this for a living."

"You do." I kept forgetting that. "What can I do?"

"You can come here and do sorcery on him!"

"Oh. Well, okay. Wake Floyd, have him trump me, and I'll be right there."

"Good. Hold on."

We disconnected. I looked up. "Listen, buddy. Mate. Whatever. I've got to go get my ass kicked again, so good luck."

Hank nodded. "Are you ready for that?"

"Not even close."

"You can't go! They'll all get crazy. I need you to tell me when to drink this!"

"You'll be fine. Wait until you see Venus, and be someplace you can safely have a few minor little seizures. Wait until they take the IVs out. Hope you don't have a catheter."

"What if I do it wrong?"

"You may be paralyzed for life."

"That is not acceptable!"

"What?" I demanded. "You want to come to Australia?"

"Yes! I'm from Australia! I'm Australian!"

Oh, yeah. "Fine. God, they're really going to flip shit when we both leave." I texted Karen asking for a few minutes. 

I sent a nice, highly non-lethal rabbit to HEM asking for another combat workup and Freedom from Earthly Bonds. Hank had some needles in his arm, some suspicious tubes going up under his blankets, and I didn't want to mess with them. I was about to mess with them. This was such a terrible idea. The Hall of Eternal Memory replied with nice vellum diagrams and passive-aggressive congratulations for using rabbits instead of poisonous frogs.

We wouldn't be having this problem if they used email!

I racked Freedom of Earthly Bonds, checked it, and told the dirty duo underneath Uluru I was ready. 

There was a sudden sensation of distance, and the walls retreated. An impression of Floyd appeared over my bed, and a looming presence of rock, darkness, and claustrophobia. I blasted our Earthly Bonds. The monitors went insane. Floyd reached out his hand, and I grabbed Hank as the nurses ran in screaming. The front one was kinda cute when she was angry. I blew her a kiss, and we stepped through to Australia. 

 

"You don't look so good," said Floyd as we entered the vaulted cavern. It wasn't really a cavern, as the ceiling wasn't an arch, merely a complex fold of stone, but it was dark and grim with reflected starlight for illumination. 

"I'm fine!" I yelled, dropped Hank, and collapsed. "I was going to tell you, but Karen had to be all, like, we found Prometheus, and by the way, damn."

"Good evening," said the bound titan. "Please call me Mathy."

"Good evening. Please call me Martin. Mathy, Hank. Hank, Mathy. 

He exceeded my expectations beyond my ability to fit him to my world. Mathy was twenty five, maybe thirty feet tall, shackled to sloped face by wrist and ankle manacles. The slope inclined enough he could lay down, but it didn't look comfortable. He was wounded over his liver, less than a day old, and that was probably going to get a low worse in a few hours. The manacles shifted as he moved.

As astonishing as he was as an entity, as a person he was stranger. His shoulders and hips were calloused, his wrists and ankles chafed, and there were ten foot hairs caught on the stone behind his head. His features were proto-greek. His hands were too big for his body, as were his feet, and his forehead was like a cliff. His nose was a massif under the overhang of his brow. Some ancient carver had given him only thin smears for lips and hidden away his eyes. In the dark they were only glints of reflections in the shadow. 

I was perfectly prepared to believe him some animatronic facsimile, but his face moved too much. Innumerable tiny expressions played over him even in the dimness as Hank and I arrived, were introduced, and he smiled to meet us. I don't think he'd been this interested in years. 

"Be welcome, Hank and Martin, to the Hall of Rock, Under the Rock."

"Are you okay?" asked Karen of Hank. 

"I will be," the driver replied, and I agreed with him. 

"His lower body wasn't completely removed, so they stitched it back on. He's paralyzed, but the Rooster gave him a Distillate of Venus. Long story. He'll be fine. Now where's this Spider, and let's fight him!"

"Is that a good idea? You were paranoid about doing magic in the shadow of Uluru, and now we're under it," asked Floyd.

"Psssh," I replied.

"Um," said Karen. "Why didn't you take the distillate and then use magic on Hank?"

"I'm not screwing that up again," I replied and refused to explain. "So, the Spider, where is he?"

"Out there. In the dark." Karen pointed down into the shadows. 

The chasm narrowed sharply where the incoming cut appeared in a fold of rock, and I blithely descended. Karen and Floyd followed. I crawled over so I could see down the long, dark straight of the path in. It was almost a tunnel, and a squat shadow with bright eyes watched from far within. If that was the Spider and not just a mirage. If he wasn't lurking somewhere else. 

"I'm rethinking my plan," I decided.

"Let's go back," urged Karen. She shepherded us away from the dim pathway, looking up where the canyon twisted into the folds of the rock. Floyd and I paused to conspire in the open space at the base of Mathy's rock, near the pile of broken machinery, but Karen climbed back up to the titan. Hank was not a small guy, but she leveraged him up on her hip and carried him up near Mathy's head so the three of them could talk quietly. She kept glancing upwards to the star holes in the sheet of stone. 

"Do magic," Floyd urged me and pointed down the pathway of death. 

"Okay. I'll start racking."

"How long is that going to take?"

"A few hours. Look, sight casting something is like sight reading. You get one go through, and you can't go back. If I rack it, I can lay it all out, check the earlier connections, and then hang it. It still needs to run a clean compile, but there's a big difference between a clean compile with time to at least look over earlier code and just spouting stuff. Especially stuff I don't practice."

"You don't practice?" asked Floyd, raising an eyebrow.

"Not deep fat frying people," I replied acidly. 

Floyd blinked at me. "What?"

"Oh, yeah." I grinned. "It's about to happen."

Floyd jutted out his bottom lip like he didn't want to be interested but was. "Can I see some magic?"

"Sure." I checked my notes. The top sheet was a copy of Immolant Petrification, how Kim had gone, which I stared at for a few heartbeats before shuffling it to the bottom of the stack. That one was shady. Next up was Elder Lightning. It's a big, serious-looking spell with a Lord, Alchemist of the Tempest, Legion, all grave looking runes, but it required vision of the planets. I didn't know what powers Floyd had, but he couldn't accidentally case it here. I checked. No planets. "Here. Lightning. Don't read it out loud."

What else had they given me? Immolant Petrification isn't in a usual combat package. I started thumbing through HEM's missive. Purge the Legacy? Were they trying to get me killed?

"Hey, do I hum?" I asked.

"Yeah." Floyd looked at me.

I shrugged and went back to reading. When I didn't explain, he looked upwards. He'd gotten to the Farmer of Jupiter, I bet. Ha. I was a step ahead. He went back to reading.


	27. Chapter 27

27

Liz explained to Erica why we couldn't be making phone calls to each other. "The system isn't logging outgoing or incoming location data. There was the one set of hits in Boston, an outgoing text and incoming call, but there was no location data for the outgoing call. They can't do that."

"What outgoing call?" asked Erica. She was in a regally appointed office, floor to ceiling windows showing the stark desert through windows tinted to filter glare and accentuate the contrast. On the inward side, her right, there was a minimalist wooden sideboard that had unopened liquor bottles and a selection of painted kangaroo skulls. There were no pictures.

"The outgoing call that was the incoming call," explained Liz.

Erica digested that. "Why don't you clarify your terminology?"

"Each call is two parts. One is outgoing, the call going from the dialer, and one is incoming, to the answerer." In her office in Seoul, Liz thought for a second and decided clarity was more important than objective technical accuracy. "That first number, 720 area code, sent a pair of SMSes from Boston at 1043 GMT, 6:43 Boston Time. We know what the outgoing location was. We don't know where the incoming location was for either of those texts. Conversely, at 1045 the Denver number got an incoming call in Boston. We have the incoming cell location. We don't know where the outgoing call, the dialing phone that called the Denver phone, came from. They can't do that!"

Erica thought. "How impossible is it?"

"What do you mean, how impossible is it?" replied Liz, confused.

"Is it a technological impossibility, something we can't do but someone used a masker or something you didn't think was possible, or flat out cannot be done?"

Liz felt nonplussed. "If you're asking could it be done with something that cannot be made, I don't know what to say to you."

"I understand. Bad question. Where is the Denver phone now?"

"Gone. Either off or in whatever Bermuda triangle it's contacting."

"Southwest of Alice Springs," corrected Erica but did not explain. "Continue monitoring. I'm increasing your rate if you stay on this."

"You couldn't make me go," swore Liz, and Erica thanked her and hung up.

Mustermann called the Serpent. "Find me Kim."

He called her back about twenty minutes later. "Kim's not in his hooch. It's full of poisonous frogs."

Erica took the phone away from her ear so she could stare at it. It was matte black, minimalist, and frankly not that interesting, but she goggled at it. Then she stared at her office bar, eyes finding the unopened, five thousand USD bottle of rattlesnake venom tequila. She put the phone back to her ear. "Meet me on the third floor of the resort. Be there now."

She hung up, took a stiletto from a desk drawer, and hid it in a thigh holster. Then she changed her heels for thick-soled flats, and hid another auto-opener in a compartment in her right shoe. She considered taking a gun, but her suit was closely tailored. Instead she went to the kitchenette next door and took a plastic bag full of plastic bags from under the sink.

The long glass walkways between the business center and resort were colonnades of shattered glass. A few dead locusts were stuck here and there, but most had gone. Outside starlight was bright enough to compensate for the lack of overhead lighting, but broken fluorescent bulbs made the granite floor treacherous. 

In the resort everyone was gone. Doors hung open, laundry carts lay overturned, and several maid's trays of cleaning supplies lay stacked in the hallway. Their carriers had put them down and rushed off. Erica took the stairs to the third floor, and the Serpent met her at the landing. He must have run from Kim's hooch, but he wasn't out of breath.

The third floor hallway was full of poisonous frogs. Bright red, green, and purple amphibians stuck to the walls and ceiling, standing out brightly from the subdued classical silver walls. A hole had been blown through one door, and much of the hallway broken. Other doors on either side of the blast crater were blown inwards from the hallway, and if there was a most dense area of amphibians, it would be room 315, next to the blast site. Erica knew room 315. She looked at the rubble, thinking frogs could be hiding anywhere. At least there were no locusts. 

"Brightly colored animals are typically a warning," Erica said, looking out. "A threat. That hallway is full of color."

"So the target killed Kim." The Serpent shrugged. "It doesn't matter any more. With Kim gone, we can't fine tune the construct. Call the trigger-pullers, have them remove the interference."

Erica looked at him but didn't immediately reply. When she did, it was from far away. "We will need to acquire a new constructor, someone to write out the patterns. With Kim gone we'll-"

"You are screwing around," interrupted the Serpent. "With Kim gone we have no need of the target."

"Hush. We will-

The Serpent reached into his vest pocket and took out a white gold engagement ring. It was cheap that wanted to be expensive with thick brackets around small stones, cunningly worked to make the diamonds look bigger. It hung from a tungsten chain, looped over the Serpent's burning fingers, and he dangled it in front of her. The ring swung back and forth like a slow metronome.

Erica stared at it. "We need to adjust the construct, and repair it from the shoot-out-"

The ring swung.

"Madre Oscura can bring us-"

The ring swung.

"Damn you, answer me! We can call Madre Oscura and-"

"We don't have a writer," said the Serpent smoothly, the words a subtle strike through her guard. "We can't get one in time. We didn't have one until Kim came through, and we won't find another because we can't search until after the conjunction. Karesh Ni must be served by then. We don't have a writer, and we won't get another." The Serpent's words were soft and quick, sharply pronounced with clipped esses. He waved the ring.

Erica's head began rocking in unison with it as her body slunk back. Her shoulders hunched up even as her feet retreated. 

The Serpent pressed. "We've lost the target. He's gone. We've lost control." Bam, bam, bam, Erica retreated through the door to the stairs, hunching on the railing. The Serpent chased her down, legs moving disconnected with his upper body. "Call the trigger-pullers."

She didn't say anything.

"He's out of your control. Don't fight when you can win. Call them."

"We don't even know where they are," Erica whined.

"Death is watching them. She says they're in the Dreamlands, under Uluru." 

Erica hid behind her hands, the last defense of a pinned grappler. The Serpent's painted hand slithered into her coat pocket, took her phone, while another snagged her guard hand. He put her hand to the phone, unlocked it, and dialed. 

"Send the strike," he ordered.

Erica was tired, so tired, and the Serpent put the phone to her. His hands were glowing embers, and his cold black eyes sucked all the light from the world. The Serpent swayed, and his eyes merged with darkness. Traces of color from the hallway beyond couldn't pass. 

The Serpent dangled the chain from his fingers and stilled it so he could fix his eye on her through the silvered ring. 

"Send the strike," he demanded. 

She leaned against his hand and said, "Emerald, this is Sapphire. They're under Uluru. Send the contract workers."


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will be done by Monday.
> 
> Edit: Regarding Monday: [AwkwardEmmaWatsonLaugh.gif]

28

"All right, this is the deal. I just racked Lightning Fugue, Horror on Winged Feet, and Verdant Cataclysm. At first I thought my librarian was mad at me, and now I want to send her a gift box full of poisonous chocolate snakes. We need to bait the Spider out of this hole so I can see him, and then I'll drop the unhappy. Ready?" I said after finishing my prep and checks.

They gave me that look I prefer to interpret as 'Oh, Martin, you're so cool.'

Materially they all looked like they wanted to argue with me, and one by one they didn't. Floyd was first, but he and I were in the habit of arguing. His chalk-stained fingers rolled a piece of red and white together, forming a grainy pink that dusted his pants. It looked weird, pink chalk, black skin. His hands reminded me of the Serpent. It had been a few days since any of us had changed our clothes, and he was still wearing the nice jeans and shirt from the party we'd met Nick and Allison at. They were... well. He looked up to confirm we couldn't see the stars, then he shrugged.

"What about Venus?" asked Hank. Hank sat uphill of us, propped up with his legs hidden in a bit of crack wearing a hospital gown. They'd cut his clothes off him, and he had two floral mumus, one on each side so his butt didn't show. That looked absurd at the best. They were dirty now, so at least the pretty white flowers were muted. 

"I don't know if it's visible or when. It's typically up in the morning, and we've got a few hours until that," I said, facing him. 

Hank muttered. He didn't fight though.

"And your head injuries?" asked Karen.

Of all of us, only Karen looked ready for whatever hit. They had gotten food and water sometime over the night, and she'd taken care of some of the grime on her. She was back in track pants and a sports top, some skin-tight moisture wicking thing with built in bra, her hair cemented in a dirty braid. She looked calm. When Floyd and I talked about Elder Lightning and Jupiter, she looked up as well, and all of us had paused to examine the stars. They were brilliant and cold. When she asked about my head she didn't couch it with disclaimers regarding my combat effectiveness. It felt nice.

"Dropped internal healing. They're already in my head-" I started to explain to Hank, but he just waved me off. 

"Magic, whatever."

"Well, yes," I said and stopped. I wasn't going to win this. I didn't even know what I could win. 

"Do you want us to do anything for you?" I asked Mathy.

The bound titan declined. "Do not forget me. Having brought your enemies to my home, you remove them and bring honor to yourselves. The quiet honor of your duty becomes you. Remember me."

I wanted to say 'Sure thing' flippantly or make some joke about forgetting the gian bound to the bowels of Uluru, but this was a grim place. If I made a joke here, I believed I would be bound to it. We all promised we would do as he asked, and a weight of our own settled on us. Then it was time.

"How do you want to do it?" I asked Karen. "You bait him, and I'll drop?"

"The Spider? Can we do it topside?" she countered.

"Yes, he's interdicting the way out."

"Can you magic us?" Karen asked, looking up. The folds and bends between us and the stars were indistinct shades of black and grey.

"Possibly, I could run a Galleon of the Foot-"

Floyd interrupted Karen and I cold, and we froze, unimaginably irritated he kept thinking of doing that first. "Jack! Need some help. Where's the Spider?" 

Jack said something, and Floyd gasped. 

We stood by Mathy's right hand in a rough diamond. The stone formed a steep grade. Hank was highest, Floyd downhill, Karen close to the titan, and I faced her and him. Floyd's face flashed to me, and the others all looked my way before realizing the little artist was actually looking over my shoulder. By then it was too late. The Spider struck. 

He kneed me in the back of the head and near killed me. My face dove into a rock and out went the lights. I hit and rolled. Then the Spider pounced on Karen, tried to snag her, she dodged, and he standing blitzed.

The Spider hit her guard so many times he blew threw her arms where she knew he was coming. Fists, feet, knees, elbows, he dropped four hits for each of hers. She turtled up and he punched through, putting kicks to her body and forearms against her shoulders. It's shocking when someone gets on you like that, and with the hill he had elevation and range. Karen bolted and ran. Floyd had dropped to draw some firearm monstrosity on the ground, and the Spider nearly punted his head off. 

In about eight seconds he knocked two of us out and demonstrated complete domination of our best fighter. Mathy strove to grab him, but the kick-boxer stayed clear. 

I started to wake up, and Karen ran for space. We all assumed she'd get blitzed again any moment. Instead the Spider pounced on Hank. He said something in Thai, and dropped a knife hand on Hank's neck. The big Aussie crumpled, his shoulders bent, and one of his collar bones tried to stick out of his throat. The Spider snatched him off the rock and held him up. Karen had flinched in the moment, but she dashed up the rock behind them, leaping over Floyd's still form, and the Spider mule kicked her blind. His heel caught her in the air. She dropped. The Spider drew back another crushing hit, and Hank, groggy, bemused, befuddled, stabbed him in the throat with a pen.

It didn't actually hurt that much. You could read the Spider's body language, and he wasn't in pain. He was startled. He couldn't see the pen in his trachea, but if he lowered his head his chin hit it. His breath was a sucking whistle through the pen top. He dropped our driver and stumbled back to put his hands to his neck, the exact same confusion on his face as on Karen's as she tried to walk up the stone towards him. She was having problems because the ground wasn't flat. He couldn't understand why the prey had hurt him. 

I had no idea about anything that was going on and my face didn't work, but to hell with everybody: lightning.

A column of charged plasma the width of a tree-trunk dropped out of the sky hit the Spider like biblical rage. The sound was ungodly. There was nowhere for the echoes to go in the Hall of Rock, so they smashed us again and again, physical pressure against the ears and chest. Great boulders fractured off the walls and fell. It was a while before anyone could move. There was no sign of the Spider, but the ground was dirty.

Karen got up and rolled Floyd over, checking his airway, breathing, and circulation. He wasn't dead. She checked Hank next, who had to lie very still lest his broken collarbone rip open his trachea. He wasn't dead either, and he gripped the distillate in one tight fist. Then Karen checked me, and I would be fine if I could stop getting these damn concussions. 

"Magic!" I yelled when she rolled me over. 

She opened her mouth for a smart remark and discarded it. "Okay, I'll give you that one."

"Thank you. Now help me to the others, because I see, like, five of you."

"Right." She hoisted me up on a shoulder. "Mathy, how are you, big guy?"

"Alive," he replied.

"Right," she said again and carried me over to the rest.

"What did you do?" asked Floyd, who wasn't much better than me.

"Lightning Fugue, without the coda," I replied. I still had a minor internal healing racked, so I fired that on myself and checked out the artist. 

"Inside?"

"Magic lightning. Dude, I'm breaking laws of nature like a politician's budget plan. Hank, how you doing?"

He did not answer.

"Hank?"

He still did not answer. 

Karen and I crawled over to him.

"Buddy!" I yelled, while Karen said, "Hank?"

"What? Oh, sorry, sorry," he said, as if hearing us for the first time. His voice didn't sound gurgly. "I was, I was-" he paused, and finished some other statement. "I did not expect that."

"Expect what?" asked Karen.

Hank stared off into space and replied, "I've been preparing, in my head, for what I would do if the Spider got his hands on me again. I've been rehearsing it. And when he did, I didn't."

"What are you talking about? You took him out!" I insisted.

"No, you took him out."

"No, I finished him. You took him out with the pen."

"But I hesitated. I looked at him, thinking, 'I should stab this guy,' and I didn't."

Karen did a body roll so she went from crouching above him to sitting at his side. "That happens," she said. "People don't talk about it. My coach calls it impact shock, and the fans don't understand. You were thinking like a fan, Hank. When you get hit, you don't think straight. It's-" She paused. "It takes a lot of effort to get hit, and when you're thinking so hard about hitting back, it's like you're furiously mouse clicking when your computer is frozen."

"Isn't the strategy then to train your reflexes until you strike without thinking?" asked Hank.

Karen pursed her lips and frowned. "You mean just swing for the fences all the time? I know people who do that. They don't win a lot."

"Hey, you still got that Distillate of Venus?" I interrupted.

"Yeah," Hank said. They looked at me. 

"Good. We need to get you to a clear view of the sky. Now. Floyd, Trump us outside. Hank, drink the potion once you see Venus, and then we see if you need to go to a hospital or not."

It was getting on towards morning. We said our goodbyes to Mathy again, and he replied with the same long patience. I felt sick leaving him there on the stone, and Karen was obviously trying to think of an alternative. Floyd didn't have any paper, but he committed the room to his memory. Hank seemed dispassionate, but his adrenalin was wearing off. Hank mostly looked unhappy. 

"Where to? The Empire?" asked Floyd.

The rest of us looked at each other. "Yeah, the Empire."

In a few fast lines we were gone, and Mathy was alone. 

We landed, and Hanked jabbed me a few times, asking about Venus. I looked sagely into the heavens and remembered my PhD was brute force numerical modelling of doped semiconductors. I'm pretty sure the stars were those bright things. I googled that shit.

Floyd had not actually brought us to the Empire. He had drawn a trump of it on the rock so we stepped through facing it, near Kim's lair between the massive hotel and the more massive Uluru. It was a tall, hard building of steel and glass, and the dumpster Kim lived against was a harder metal box of drained kangaroos. The little tourist town of Ayer's Outpost, little more than a few shops surfing the Empire's litigious wake against the Northwest Territories, lay to the north, quiet and empty. The world was empty.

"No grass," said Floyd absently. Karen nodded.

"Locusts," I said, looking up from my phone, but they just waved me back to work. The Milky Way gleamed to the north, infinitesimally faded by the lights of Yulara while to the south the stars hung in a perfect black void. There wasn't a cloud in the sky.

"That's Venus," I said, holding my phone up so it could identify the stars through the camera and give me a read. "Now be careful because-" and Hank had already drank the distillate. "Dude."

"Ha!" yelled Hank before going rigid, then thrashing in Karen's arms. She was carrying him over the shoulder, but once he started spasming, there was nothing to be done. She dropped him onto the asphalt. He started to glow blue, and before anyone could touch him, Karen looked like she wanted to stick her fingers in his mouth to be sure he didn't bite his tongue, I dragged her and Floyd out of the direct line between him and Venus. The first tiny wisp of blue thread reached between them.

"Okay, so he literally just drew a line across the sky pointing to where we are," I said. "All of the scary people are going to try to kill us now. He can't be moved, because if you touch that blue line, it will suck your vitality out, and either paralyze or kill you. Could just give you cancer, I guess. This is so awesome. Take cover."


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you use sweet vermouth, you are the problem.

29

"What do we do about Hank?" asked Karen. Her hands betrayed she wanted to go to him, but that blue line of death kept her back.

"Use carpet to drag him out of the middle of the street. We can't take him inside, but at least we can put him someplace less exposed than here," I said, thinking of all the crap in Kim's place.

"I don't think you're supposed to move people when they're having a seizure," she argued.

"You're not. Moving people is bad, but bullets are worse," I agreed.

"And you think-" She thought about the last couple days. "Okay. Floyd, help me, please."

Floyd went along to get along, and they started rigging a sort of sled with scraps of old flooring. That left me on guard detail, so I hid under behind some boxes and tried to look in all directions at once. The tail end of night dragged on, and it was cold compared to the day. Dust devils wandered past. The foliage had been stripped to the ground, and the tin brown whirlwinds smacked into each other, merged, died, and were born again. One dust storm made a bee-line out of the Outback, whirled almost up to my face, and unwound into Nick in a navy blue business suit and tie. He greeted me pleasantly.

"Evening!"

I goggled at him and said a lot of unfriendly things about procreation.

He considered. "No. But it is good to see you again."

"I thought you were dead!" I yelled 

"Also no," he replied, and Karen burst out of the dim hooch at my shouting, ready to kick ass. She also froze seeing Nick.

"You're dead!" she yelled.

"Still no," he replied and moved towards her for a hug. She was about to reply, and I interrupted them.

"Stop! He was dead! This is an imposter! A shapeshifting assassin!"

Karen gasped and dove clear of his arms, leaving Nick hugging empty air and himself as she cleared space. He shot me some wicked side-eye.

"Why?"

"Because you were dead, and now you're a shapeshifting assassin!" I ran some math in my head and selected Horror on Winged Feet. Lightning Fugue would be better but took a few hours to rerack. Meanwhile Karen looked ready to party hard, feet spread, fists up, body loose. 

"I am a shapeshifting assassin," Nick admitted. "But I've always been that. I'm the same Nick you met earlier. When the Serpent touched me, something in his hands, or maybe just in him, infected me. I had to shift to a recuperative state. I'm better now."

All things considered, that was moderately believable. "That sounds like the sort of thing a shape-shifting assassin would say."

"Because I'm a shape-shifting assassin," he repeated slowly, voice rich with false patience.

"Floyd! Trump Nick!" yelled Karen 

"Oh, good thinking," I muttered, and she nodded.

Nick started asking questions like, "What are you two talking about?" but froze to look up and to his left. There was nothing there. He seemed perplexed. "Yes?"

A moment of silence passed.

"No. Absolutely not. Never use sweet vermouth. Don't we have a civilization?" he demanded of emptiness.

More silence. 

He kicked one leg out and shifted his weight to his right hip, lifting a finger to gesture like a teacher. "That may be true, but if you're using inferior whisky-"

Kim's door flew open. "It's him," yelled Floyd from inside.

"Nick!" shouted Karen and swooped in for a hug. He lost the train of thought and hugged her back, and they fussed over each other. Keeping an eye out, I waited, and then got up to shake his hand. We did the 'sorry I left you for dead - don't mention it, turning into goo gives people that impression' conversation, and then Floyd and he shook hands as well. We all got back under cover, and did the carpet trick to get Hank out of the wide open, moving him as close to the dumpsters as we could without blocking the blue line. I admitted I didn't know how long this was going to take, but that was boring so we rounded on Nick demanding explanations.

"It was Allison's idea," he said when we were again in position. "The change of shape is absolute and effortless, but it does take decision. You shift back in your sleep. Allison's been using young shapes for years, it would be indelicate to say how many, but the march of time is relentless. When she heard about Erica Mustermann's offer, she came to find out if there was any truth to it. I think this Erica woman is running a con, so I came too.

"We tried to make contact with Mustermann, but she was hard to find so we threw the party you three attended to get her attention. Two of her goons showed up, the Mantis and the Serpent, and the Mantis drank the Serpent under the table. There isn't much affection lost between those two. The Serpent slithered off to pass out, and then you got the Mantis stoned. Realizing that put two down, I took the Serpent's shape to search the place. I didn't find much. There were some explosions, Allison-" he flinched and licked his lips. "Thereafter I found you two, and not knowing what was going on, tried to fleece you for information in the smoke shack. But you escaped. Later I met you again, and lost my head, and the Serpent almost killed me."

"If the Mantis drank the Serpent under the table, why were they both cognizant later?" I asked, and realized I should have said that deceptively to trick Nick if he really was an imposter. Damn. Thought of it the moment the words left my mouth.

"Oh, because they're three of the four. They call themselves the Horsemen."

"The Horsemen? Like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?" asked Karen.

"The same. Well, not the same, but named for the same. I don't think they're the actual horsemen of the apocalypse. They're known to us. The Mantis, Spider, Serpent, and Tiger. They made a faustian deal for power, and one of those powers is preternatural recovery. The Serpent can sleep off a day long hangover in an hour. Rumor is they actually get better the closer they are to death, but I'm not sure how that works out."

"Then who'd they make the faustian deal with? Mustermann?" asked Floyd.

"No. I don't know who she is. They made the deal with someone else named Karesh Ni."

Floyd started smacking Karen in the arm. "Hey. Hey. Hey. That's the guy Jack was talking about. The guy he wants us to stop."

Karen smacked him back. "Yes. Stop hitting me."

"Who's Karesh Ni?" I demanded. 

They looked at me. "I thought you were a great and mysterious wizard?" said Floyd in a voice rich with sarcasm.

"You're a wizard?" asked Nick.

"Magus! And yes. I thought we had this conversation," I demanded of Nick.

"Maybe. You're just such a tool I don't expect it."

I get no respect. I decided to summon a frog but changed my mind at the last moment to summon an eagle. Majestic creature. Gold feathers gave it a crown and cape, and it perched on a steel rung of the dumpster ladder like a benevolent idol. I took some hospital stationery from my pocket, scratched out an information request on Karesh Ni, and sent him off to HEM. Stupid HEM. Stupid bird. Hopefully the one shat everywhere on the other. 

You never have that problem with frogs. Maybe a little death if you touch one, but no white squirts of frog droppings. They may be deadly but at least they're hygienic. 

"Are you French?" asked Karen of Nick.

He blinked at her, transfixed. "I was born in Quebec. How did you-"

"That's it!" she exclaimed, and smacked her fist into her hand.

Floyd and I stared at the two of them and exchanged looks. He hadn't heard any accent either. Nick looked as surprised as we. "Did I say something?"

"You hide it extremely well. You aim for New Yorker with a hint of TV Chicago?" she asked. 

"Yes, I-" He stopped to stare at her.

She nodded to herself. "Thought so. It's been driving me nuts."

"Sssh. I saw movement," interrupted Floyd, and we all shut up.

My phone said Jupiter was up, so that put Elder Lightning in play. I didn't bother to check. The four of us crouched underneath some slats piled against a dumpster while Hank thrashed and jumped on the asphalt. Piles of loose carpet samples under his head and back prevented him from braining himself. His legs pulsed and kicked. If he was conscious he was probably really unhappy, but I wasn't sure of that. Alchemy works funny, and I don't do it. 

"Sniper, south by southwest. Maybe eight, nine hundred meters," said Karen suddenly, looking across an expanse of locust-eaten nothingness between the Empire and Uluru.

The rest of us couldn't see anything.

"Are you sure?" asked Floyd uncertainly.

"Very. Big gun. It has a lever-thingy."

"Lever-thingy? Over the trigger? You mean a bolt?" asked Floyd.

"No, I mean a lever-thingy, but if that's what a bolt looks like, it's that. I'm going to take him."

"How?" demanded Floyd, the exact moment Nick asked, "Across a kilometer of desert?"

"Yes. He made us but doesn't have a shot."

We froze and looked again across the desert. There was nothing. No signs of any sniper showed anywhere.

"Karen, maybe you shouldn't-" but she did.

She went from a crouch to a dash like a sprinter and tore off diagonally across the asphalt, making a bee-line for absolutely nothing. I slashed my gaze right and left of her, expecting the shooter to be off line if she was running diagonally. That woman could run. She moved perfectly effortless, hands open and slashing arcs at her side, and body surging. The gears in her butt drove the pistons in her legs, and she hurdled a pile of crap like it was nothing. Her breath was perfectly controlled. The way she ran was mesmerizing, and I happened see the muzzle flash beyond her. 

First was the flash, a sharp glimpse of silent light, then nothing for long heartbeats as time slowed before Karen dodged sideways with her shoulders back and wide as what felt instantaneously the dumpster slammed and rocked. The bullet smashed a sink-hole entry, blew a crater exit, and frag rained down on the road behind us. The metal box quaked. Karen was running dead towards the shooter, just a few feet left of her original line as the report hit.

"She just dodged a bullet," whispered Floyd in awe. 

I couldn't see the shooter. I couldn't see him. I had seen the muzzle flash, I knew exactly where he should be, and I couldn't see him. Staring dead at where the sniper should be, I couldn't put my mind's finger on a detail I could feed to lightning. This was not possible. It was not possible! He couldn't be hidden so well I couldn't see him when I knew where he was.

The world was too wide for echoes so it was silent again, and Karen kept running. A sound came to me like a premonition, a subtle rasp of oiled metal on oiled metal as a lever lifted, drew, a bolt discharged a spent casing, and the lever rode forward and clicked down. Well milled metal parts contacted each other with a thin film of gun oil between. I could hear it in my mind, the simple urge of hardened steel seating the cartridge. Karen kept running.

She had half a mile to go, maybe a little more. It would take her two minutes to get to the shooter. He drew sight picture, shooting platform stable, trigger squeeze gentle, breathing halted, and the rifle cracked.

Karen leaped sideways, the bullet ripped through the dumpster, and she kept right on running, back on her original trajectory.

"Floyd, can you make a trump of the sniper?" I asked. I didn't know if a Floyd-sketch would work as a link. It should. I could rehang Elder Lightning for that on the fly by subbing out the targeting rune.

"No. I never got a good look." He shook his head.

"You said you saw movement?"

"I did, I just-"

Understanding, realization, and the Tiger hit us all at once from a completely different direction.

The Tiger was a big man from Manchuria. His parents had been a steelworker and a scrap monger, and they'd both been large, powerful people. The Tiger was the same for all that he hadn't been home since he was five. He had massive shoulders and a thick, blocky chest over a hard gut. Fat-man abs bulged in his belly and flexed as he twisted. Once he had been called Hu. Now he smashed the garbage pile we used as concealment, ripped it to shreds with his fingers and knocked Floyd and I rolling across the asphalt. He focused on Nick, and one slicing hand disemboweled the lanky Canadian from hips to ribs. Organs knitted together with bulging lines of intestine flew from his stomach. The Tiger slashed again and shredded Nick's lungs.

Above us Jupiter flashed once as the Farmer sucked power to feed it to the Lord King. The Alchemist mixed Fire and Air, refined by the Tempest. If all the sky were stars and all the stars angels, lightning fell like Lucifer's army onto the Tiger's head.

I couldn't see shit for five or ten seconds. I couldn't smell anything but ozone. Even the thick stink of Kim's carcass-laden dumpster was seared from the air. Since targeted by the Eye, I couldn't look away when it hit, and this close it would be days before the jagged white brand faded from my vision. I blinked and blinked until my eyes watered, then I had to turn sideways to see the target out of my peripheral vision.

The Tiger wasn't dead. He wasn't even down. He was, however, bald. The Tiger stood over Nick's heaving carcass with a baffled expression on his face, and he looked at me as I looked at him. I'd blown his clothes off, and the tops of his shoes were spun around backwards on his feet, while the soles were annihilated into dirt. He was wearing that and a cup holder. 

Diffidently, like a confused old man wandered into the wrong room, the Tiger tottered away. He staggered around the corner of the dumpster, hopping sideways a few times as the sharp turn upset his moderate walk. He caught his balance and disappeared.

Floyd grabbed me by the shoulders and physically turned me around. He mouthed silent words. I nodded agreeably.

He pantomimed yelling a lot, like agreement wasn't what he was looking for. 

Okay. I shook my head. Whatever worked for him.

Floyd dropped me in frustration and walked back to Nick.

As I sat in blithe stupor, the artist checked on Nick and found that mere disembowelment hadn't killed him. It hadn't even stopped the hyperactive little man from talking.

"Floyd! Buddy! I need some help. I need you to put my organs back inside with the squishy bits," urged Nick. He was a mountain range with a canyon through the middle. The talking head mountain was excited and controlled, but the wiggling foothills weren't obeying instructions.

"I think you need new organs, buddy," replied Floyd. A great deal of Nick had been deep-fat fried.

"I'll be fine. I just need the biological matter. Be a pal. Shovel it back in."

There were no shovels. Nick's squishy bits were disgusting, oozy, and somewhat crispy. Floyd sighed and started piling the barbequed guts mishmash into Nick's chest cavity. When he was mostly finished, fibers reached between severed rib ends and thickened. By the time as much of him as Floyd could collect without a squeegee was more or less inside, an unframed tent of skin sprawled across Nick's chest and gut-hole was closing up on the sides. 

Karen trotted back looking frustrated.

"He took another shot at about three hundred meters, then jumped on a motorcycle and ran off. He was wearing one of those camouflage suits. I didn't see anything useful. What happened to them?" she asked Nick.

"Another bad guy tried to kill him." Floyd pointed at Nick, who beamed at her. "He dropped lightning on the bad guy." Floyd pointed at me, who wasn't really paying attention. "His guts are now everywhere." Nick waved like a car salesman.

Karen took it all in quickly. "Hank?"

Everyone looked at Hank.

The blue line of death was gone. Hank lay still, his chest following a gentle pattern of rise and fall, and his eyes were closed. Every now and then one of his feet shook with involuntary muscle spasms. He was barefoot and bare legged under the dirty hospital gowns. 

"Where exactly did the bad guy go?" asked Karen.

"Oh, I don't know. He wandered off." Nick wiped his hands on the burned side of the dumpster.

Karen glowered at him then made a few looping circuits of the area. She didn't find the Tiger.


	30. Chapter 30

"All right, so if little Timmy-no patience over there can avoid spoiling everything, HEM just sent me a write-up on Karesh Ni," I said, standing magnificently with an eagle perched on my shoulder.

They're majestic birds. This one gazed seriously off into the distance, perhaps looking into the occult dimensions from whence it came, but it really brought my rep up. Not that it mattered.

"Oh, what is your problem?" demanded Hank.

"You drank the distillate too soon! We hadn't even gotten under cover!"

"You said drink it as soon as you spotted Venus!" yelled Hank.

"I expected you to have enough patience to wait until I'd finished explaining what was going on!"

"Patience!" Hank shrieked. "I had no freaking legs, mate!"

"Cry me river!" I yelled back. "There are starving kids in Africa who would love to have no legs!"

We glared at each other, and the eagle cried majestically. I tossed it up into the air, and it took off, probably after a rabbit or something.

Floyd interrupted our repartee. "That doesn't really make sense, Martin. What would having no legs have to do with starving kids in Africa?"

"Obviously they wouldn't need to eat as much if they didn't have legs."

"I'm not sure that works that way-"

"Of course it does! You cannot tell me your basal metabolic rate wouldn't drop by five, six hundred calories-" I did math. "-two thou' kilojoules or so, if you were removed of twenty kilograms of leg mass."

"Would the two of you stop arguing with the sorcerer?" interrupted Karen, interrupting Floyd's interruption in a manner that was frankly rude. "You're only encouraging him."

Floyd and Hank glared at her, and then glared at me, and I gave Hank the 'Deez nuts' gesture to show off my fine, functioning legs. 

Hank turned and walked away.

The Distillate of Venus had worked amazingly well, and except for mild discomfort, he was fine. He was a little shaky, like he'd been sitting for too long in the wrong position, but that would go away. He did a few jumping jacks and squats, and his coordination improved visibly.

"God, you're an irritating cunt. Why do we put up with you again?" asked Hank as he did some forward lunges. They were hard. His balance wasn't natural yet.

"Because I drop the Elder Lightning on motherfuckers. Now: Business: Karesh Ni."

"If they were starving and they really didn't want legs, they could just chop their own legs off," philosophized Floyd. "The problem isn't getting rid of legs, it's getting legs if you don't have any."

I ignored him. "There are two iterations of Karesh Ni, if you will, neglecting our current interactions with him. The former is relatively straightforward. He was a brilliant if eccentric magician during the Opium Wars. The name is actually a phonetic construction of Babylonian heritage, but since the guy was a short Sumatran who claimed, with support, to have been born on a boat near Borneo, he probably just took the title. It means 'All controlling badass' or something such, because seriously, it's made up words jammed together with stolen syllables. Anyway, he hated the Brits something fierce and parlayed that, plus power, into a theistic fiefdom in what would become the Indonesian archipelago."

"I thought you said there was no magic here?" asked Floyd.

He, Karen, and Nick had gathered around me while Hank was listening without looking like he was listening. He continued doing easy stretches on the asphalt. We were hiding behind a two pump Gasahol, "For all your auto and alcohol needs*" (*Gasahol does not condone drink driving) between the dumpsters and an ant-infested waste dirt mound. If someone was sneaking over that, they'd better be very determined. The Empire remained a silent construct reflecting the sky against itself, empty of clouds. It was one of the clearest skies I've ever seen. 

"That was before the Great Adjustment of 1909. At this point the ley lines of Oceania in general and Australia in particular were global powerhouses. This was one of the strongest places of power in the world."

"Aw yeah," cheered Hank from the corner. 

We raised our imaginary glasses in his nation's honor.

"Right, so anyway, Karesh Ni, hated the British, got a bit of power, got a bit wonky, and got shanked. He was contracted on by The Double Oxbow Society, who aren't around any more. They were British, and apparently they disliked him enough to throw him into a volcano. It was during an orgy. Word on the librarian street is Karesh Ni liked a good orgy."

"Wait," interjected Karen. "Seriously?"

"Yep. Dude was a pervert."

 

She didn't believe me. I scanned the missive from HEM, found the relevant passage, and showed it to her. 

"'Consumed of indelicate carnal lusts and ambitious, yet eucemenical, sexual proclivites,'" she read. "Okay, that doesn't exactly- 'Established the group sex culture of then-called Verdant Borneo, credited with-'" She lost her train of thought reading. Nick started put an arm around her to peer over her shoulder, and I tried to cut that off.

"Not even the issue. The fact of the matter is he got accidented into a volcano pretty hard, and for thirty odd years, that was that," I said and snatched the paper out of her hands.

"Hey," grumbled Karen.

Nick breath chuckled, but he did not remove his arm. She did not encourage him too. This was not going according to plan.

"Really, it would only matter if you then ate your own legs, because otherwise the possible, but unlikely, caloric advantage would be more than overwhelmed by the disadvantage in acquiring more food." Floyd was arguing with himself in an undertone.

"Off topic!" I yelled. "Anyway, he got got better!"

"From being volcanoed?" asked Nick, who was gloriously on topic.

"Yes! He came back. He came back bad. Long story short, without getting into issues of comparative sexual mores, he came back with a penchant for human sacrifice and was doing quite well, or quite badly depending on how you want to look at it, until the locals got upset, and he killed everybody."

"Everybody?" prompted Floyd. 

"Krakatoa was him."

"When was that?" asked Floyd.

"Eighteen eighty something." I checked the sheet. "1884. Twenty five years before the Adjustment."

"Are the two related?" asked Karen.

"Not that we know of."

"So what's he doing now?" asked Nick.

"Rotting in hell, we assume. There was a certain amount of looking the other way up until that point, but in the eighteen nineties he got contracted. Records are sketchy. His contract is marked uncompleted, but file is marked, Dead. Very. Confirmed. Presumably whatever bad things happen to dead bad people are still happening to him."

"Except the Four Horsemen made a deal with him for power in exchange for service," interjected Nick.

"Yeah, how do you know that?" I demanded.

"It is known," he said mysteriously. 

"I swear to God, if you're one of them in disguise, I will Fugue of Horrors you until you chew your own balls off," I said. "You may get me in trickery, but from hell's heart I will spit my final breath a curse upon thee."

"Okay, Americans, y'all need to calm down," said Nick, and he took his hand from around Karen to make pacifying gestures to us all. 

"What was that?" demanded Hank.

"Nothing, you're fine," replied Floyd. 

Hank squinted at him and did knee-to-chest jumps.

"I'm perfectly calm, but as a self confessed shapeshifting assassin, you're the subject of a great deal of cynicism," I told Nick. "I thought that was pretty clear."

"Neglecting your unreasonable biases, the Four Horsemen were known to us because they evangelized among our circles. When Mustermann put the word out that she controlled time and death, she implied that aging was a thing of the past. We're all terrified of aging. Look, I can be whomever and however old I want, but it takes a slight but present bit of mental effort. In sleep we revert back. Even the slightest distraction can prove significant. Allison-" Nick paused, and he clearly confronted several roadblocks. One by one he either wiggled around them or through. The rest of us waited out his unusual consideration.

"Imagine you're twenty years old, doing fine, and you forget for a moment and you've got an eighty year old liver. Imagine you had a drink, or god forbid, you were drinking like a twenty year old. Imagine you were eating sugar like a kid with adult onset diabetes. We're not even talking about lungs and heart. Among my people, age is terrifying. You mortals think of age as sneaking up on you? You think you're young forever until you're suddenly old? We're young forever until parts of us get old in a moment of distraction, and we drop dead. We live under a sword of Damocles."

"I'd take it," said Floyd.

"I'm not saying it's bad," admitted Nick. "But you should realize why Mustermann's offer was so tempting."

"How old are you really?" asked Karen.

"Me? Twenty six." He beamed at her.

Karen squinted at him.

"I feel amazing," concluded Hank, and he returned to the group.

"You do know she's a con artist, right? She's wanted in China for selling perpetual motion machines," I said to Nick.

"Don't put words in my mouth. I did not say I believed her. But something too good to be true might be worth checking out, even if it's not worth buying. When I was a kid, I would have thought smartphones were too good to be true. I've got one now," he replied.

"True," I admitted. 

"What are you talking about?" Hank asked.

"No. You do not get to ignore the conversation and then demand we repeat it for you," I said. "Mustermann's in league with an evil dead guy, and if you want more, you need to pay attention!"

"Excuse me," he muttered and rolled his eyes like I was the jerk.

"Do you have a picture of Karesh Ni?" asked Floyd.

I shuffled through the file. "Yes."

"Can I see it? I'll trump him, you drop the unhappy, and we can all go have burritos."

A moment of silence elapsed as we considered this.

"Didn't I hear something about him currently being in Hell?" asked Hank. "Do we want to trump someone there? That doesn't sound like a good plan."

"Well, presumably he's out of Hell now. He already came back once, and he's making deals with people. I did see Martin drop a metric ass-ton of lightning on the Tiger who just walked away, so there had to be something going on," said Floyd. I nodded approvingly at the show of faith.

"Okay, but this is like the conversation with the Rooster in the hospital. You weren't there, but the crux was that the Rooster, while probably more powerful than Martin, didn't start a fight because the chance that things would go bad involved things going really, really bad. I don't think things can get worse than Hell. It's the definition of Worst," replied Hank.

"Eh," said Floyd slowly and retreated from his idea unwillingly. "Well, yes, that could be very bad."

"You could trump Mustermann," Karen said to the artist. "I'd like to see her get the unhappy."

Floyd brightened at the thought. 

"If you're not going to trump Karesh Ni, I wouldn't blithely trump Mustermann lest the same problems arise," argued Nick, frowning.

"Why?" asked Floyd.

"Mustermann knew enough about shape shifters to contact us. Maybe she is one. How do you know this Mustermann isn't Karesh Ni in disguise?"

We blinked at him.

"Seriously, disguising yourself as someone of the opposite sex is one of the best disguises imaginable. People just don't put men and women together mentally. If you ever want to hide somewhere, become a woman," opined Nick.

"You're been a woman?" demanded Karen.

Nick looked at her confused. "Woman, I've been meteorological phenomena and plants."

That was clearly outside Karen's realm of expectation. Floyd and I were better prepared.

"Aw, yeah," said Floyd, and the two of us did the perverted head-bob in unison.

"You said Karesh Ni was killed after Krakatoa?" asked Hank. He wore a slow frown, a face stretched across gears plugging along in silence.

"Yes."

"But we don't know that. We know his file was marked dead, but your library, HEM, also marked his contract as uncompleted. Almost concurrently, there's this thing you called the Great Adjustment, where magic in Australia goes to piss-"

"The entire region, really," I added, but urged him to go on.

"And Uluru is in the heart of it."

"Actually more than that, Uluru is the heart of evil on Earth. It's the worst place there is. Magic goes bad here. Terribly. Normally mild mistakes become dangerous, and dangerous ones catastrophic. Even scrying spells are lethal."

"And you think all that's unrelated?" asked Hank.

I stared at him.

"Just a coincidence?" pressed Hank.

My mouth was open. I closed it.

"The guy who's a refugee from hell disappears right outside the impenetrable center of secrecy on Earth, where all things turn to harm, and you think that's just a fluke." Hank raised an eyebrow. "Ever read Milton?"

"But that's not possible. He's marked dead. HEM wouldn't do that, because they know everything," I said quietly and even still I couldn't believe I had just uttered that out loud.


	31. 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The big fight

31

We made for the Empire. Floyd asked again for a picture of Karesh Ni. We passed the old lich's mug around. He was/had been a little dude, friendly looking, generally pleasant. In the picture he looked both surprised and happy. He looked nice. He had been accidented for eating people and having sex with their corpses. No one recognized him. (Yes, we thought about Mathy. Completely different facial structure. Could be a shapeshifter, but at that point he could be anyone.)

The Empire hotel was outwardly vacant, a gleaming mirror of sky and wind, and other than a some cars in the parking lot, there were no signs of human habitation. The cars were striated with desert sand in topographical markings of dents, air intakes, and hood geometry. The smoke shack was still broken with one glass wall lying on the outside ground. Only dead bugs demonstrated there had once been anything alive, with the grass and foliage eaten down to the roots. The front doors were prismatic walls against the world the light disparity had made mirrors, and we approached, entered the IR field, and walked through ourselves inside.

Mrs Clara was standing behind the front desk, smiling like a maniac.

"Good morning, and welcome back to the Empire Resort and Hotel. Shall I show you to your room?" she asked. Her teeth were immaculate.

Unleashing Verdant Cataclysm on the strangely cheerful front-desk lady really seemed like a good idea at the time. I didn't only because 'Cataclysm has a biological blast radius, and Hank would be really pissed if his new legs sprouted leaves.

"Good morning!" chirped Karen, and we looked at her like she was the crazy one. "We'd like to see Ms Mustermann."

"Certainly. What appointment would you like?" gushed Mrs Clara.

"The final one."

There was a long, intense pause.

"So, what time is that?" asked Mrs Clara.

Karen sighed. "Right now. We want to talk to her right now."

"I can do two fifteen on Thursday."

"We do not have time for this," muttered Karen and strode past the front desk towards the elevator.

"Ma'am! You don't have a badge!" yelled Mrs Clara as we filed past and got on the phone to warn the Four Horsemen we were coming.

The elevator doors bulged open, scorched with blast effects. Red and white emergency lights marked the rails on either side of the shaft, and they came together like a vertical horizon beneath us. The drop was so cartoonish it looked painted on the ground of some reasonable elevator shaft, and even when Floyd tentatively kicked a bit of frag over the edge, it seemed fake. The bent sheet metal bounced from side to side as it fell, sometimes catching air and dumping it in erratic flight. I counted twenty three seconds as it went, but that was nothing like Galileo's measurement.

Nick formed his hands into wheels, and a bench emerged from his shoulderblades. Floyd and Karen climbed aboard. On the cusp of descending I paused and checked the inside of a railing I-beam with my pen light. The bloodmagic conduit that funneled power from below to the Desolation above remained, and it raised hairs on the back of my hand like goosebumps. 

"Hey, someone looked down and tell me if things get explody," I said and scraped the dried blood away with a pen.

"What are you doing?" demanded everyone.

"I really don't want to go down there with a Desolation active over my head," I replied, drawing a firmament blockage. The pocket clip of this pen was made of iron, so I broke it off and wedged it in the firmament to make a Rashak blockage as well. Tiny legs of static lightning reached out of the blood-channel and reached from connection, but the cold iron interdicted them. They flailed around like insect pincers, giving me the heeby-jeebies. "So I'm breaking it. Don't worry. This is one of those things that explodes right now or not at all. The Rashak will bleed whatever they put through it."

Nothing happened, so I climbed onto Nick's bench-seat back with the others and tried to dismiss their concerns. "Just a fail safe. One of those caution things. You'll thank me later."

We descended.

"You're neglecting the energy requirements of healing a double amputation," said Floyd, staring off into space. "He'd have two stumps to heal."

"I didn't physically lose the legs, I just got my spine shattered a little bit," argued Hank. "Things were still connected."

"Then outside of atrophy, you'd have almost no change to your caloric baseline," mused Floyd.

Hank nodded. 

I ignored them. Karen was idly stroking Nick's head as he gondola-ed us down into the depths, but that wasn't what I was thinking about either. The only things I had on tap were Verdant Cataclysm and Horror on Winged Feet. That is just not a friendly kit. I didn't even have a heal, and all of my magic senses were tingling with badness.

There isn't a second realm or an ambiance we can tap into. But we were riding down an elevator shaft into a computational dungeon almost underneath Ayer's Rock, from whence power lines ran to a Desolation. That was my sense of badness. I didn't want to work any magic around that.

The light-square vanished above us. The doorway was an off-center rectangle that seemed to recede. It shot upwards as we plunged, but Nick descended with such stability there was no sense of movement. The walls were close and dark, and the smell of old explosions stank in unfiltered air. This was where Allison and I had gone.

I guess she could still be alive. It was possible, right?

Nick eased to a halt, we disembarked, and Karen took point on the door. I followed, Floyd next, and Nick took rearguard.

"Hey guys," I said in an undertone. "I've got a couple things I could do right here, but they're, ah, climatic. Try to figure out what she's doing and what all this circuitry is running before we, you know, blow ourselves up under a hundred meters of bedrock."

They looked at me. Again I got that feeling they wanted to argue and one by one didn't. 

"Are you sure that's called for?" asked Karen.

"Dude, we got the Desolation up there, feeding off a fat pipe. That's- Yes. I'm pretty sure something climactic is called for," I admitted.

Karen, Dude, blinked and stepped through the door. 

"Could you do something about it? Disable it somehow?" asked Floyd.

"Dude, I'm not fucking with a Desolation outside Uluru. Not happening," I said, and turned my back on him to go through the doors.

The Horrors were there. The Tiger crouched on a twisting metal catwalk, above and sheltered by the hiss of many furious server racks, boiling. The torture table was right there, and the chairs. I saw Karen notice them, and felt Floyd eyeballing them. Pillars of rack formed forests with long walks through the colonnade. The sniper could be anywhere. So could the Serpent. But the worst was Erica, who sat on a throne of processors and boards, vaned heat sinks jutting and fans whirring. She looked at us. 

My gut said drop the unhappy on her now, and my head said I couldn't. I was scared of whatever she was about to say.

"Ah, Martin. I've missed you."

"Mustermann, " I said. Jane Doe. Good. Let's not have a connection.

"Martin and Mustermann. M and M. It doesn't work though, does it? First name and a last name? For an M&M you'd need two first names. Like Martin and Mary. You remember her, don't you, Marty? Mary? You asked her to marry you, marry Mary, and when she had a stroke, you left her in a hospital. You didn't marry Mary, Martin."

Karen turned and looked at me, and the rest of their eyes were on me too. My own eyes had nearly fallen out of my head, and I turned white. My hands were trembling.

"I don't know what you want, lady, but I got nothing for you. You've got nothing on me?" It became a question. 

"Oh, sweetie, I've got everything on you. I've got your promise, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, till death do us part," she replied, and the Serpent arose behind her. In his hands lay a silver chain, and on that chain was a cheap, white-gold engagement ring with little stones trying to look big. Erica took it from him, and made a monocle of it. She looked at me, and I felt the Will. I felt Her Will. I felt guilt. Mary laid her hate against me, and I crumbled to the floor. 

Deprived of my guidance my comrades had to go on without me, and her tender manner Karen said, "Wreck the bitch."

Floyd yanked the God-Killer out of a playing card and tossed it to Hank, a cancerous gun with too many barrels, metastasizing bolts, and lymphatic sight posts. He took the Bound Wrath himself, diving for the forest of hot-racks. Karen charged Mary, forcing the Serpent to intervene, and Nick went with her.

The sniper blew Nick's head off.

Karen spotted Mary's throat and over-committed, digging a trench behind that cross. The Serpent intervened, but had to take the shot with his arms to keep Mustermann alive. Karen broke his forearm. The Serpent never even hissed, but slashed with his other hand, the tattoos cavorting as his fingers reached. Karen swayed out of the way. She lashed back, two fast shots at the head, and the Serpent faded himself. 

Mary tried to stab Karen in the belly, and the boxer cleared space. The Serpent struck. For an instant it was two on one when Hank called, "Contact front!" and hit the I-have-too-many-bullets button. The God-Killer relieved him of that problem. Four actions drove cyclic pistons, and the gun spat brass unmentionable. 

Lines of racks exploded, creating a veritable hailstorm of secondary frag. Servers shattered, some liquidating and others remaining perfectly cool, but all hurled like additional bullets that tore electronics apart. Somewhere in there the sniper lifted up his gun and ran, and Karen focused down the Serpent.

He was fast, but she was faster. His hands were deadly, but they never touched her. He slashed, stabbed, and struck with his fingers, the fires in his skin dancing, and Karen danced better, a fast, stutter-stepped dance to no tempo but advance and retreat. She moved manipulatively arrhythmic, lying in fake patterns. Though the Serpent countered and swung, he couldn't lay a poisoned hand on her. She caught him in the ribs, shattering them, the jaw, breaking it, and the nose, bending it sideways. He gasped for air through his mouth.

Mary fled. Hank chased her. Two spires of fragged servers buckled at the base and fell, over which Hank jumped, and down from whence the Tiger pounced. Hank shot him at point blank range and both of them tumbled. 

Nick sat up and looked around like a lost puppy. After several seconds he said, "Wow." Absently he scratched his chin. 

Mary got almost to the door when Floyd laid down suppressing fire with 7.62 glazier. The rounds were compressed bundles of BBs that shattered on impact. They wouldn't penetrate hard cloth. In the cavernous server space, they shredded flesh but not the room. Mary skittered to a halt, feet planted and skidding as she windmilled her arms for balance. The door before her became a killzone. She ran back into the servers. 

"Little help!" screamed Nick as the Tiger recovered and got up. The Horror charged. Floyd screamed, "Down!" and put cover fire over the driver's head. Incendiary rounds burned lines across room, tracing phosphorescent lines in the silicon smoke as Floyd made sure the Tiger knew he was there. The big Chinese man aborted his second assault and took cover, long enough to Hank to scrabble backwards.

Meanwhile Karen was beating the Serpent to death. He wouldn't go down. She got inside his guard on the off-hand side, and the tall man couldn't move fast enough. Ribs shattered from collar bone to hip. The Serpent tried to run, and she chased, throwing herself at him and his spine. She broke his back between the lumbar and lower trapezius. His body bent in half, and the ring went flying.

I woke up and heard only violence. It was all my fault. Mary lay on her hospital bed. Her face didn't work. She couldn't talk. I was going to spend the rest of my life taking care of her alone. It would be like when the parents left, but without the hope. I'd never find anyone else. Not if I had to take care of Mary, but she couldn't talk. She couldn't move. I called her parents, told them I was running away, and remembered that some group of weirdos called the Immaculate Eye. 

A little voice in my head whispered it was all my fault, and I had run away. It was true, really. I had run away. I just wanted it to be over.

I summoned the Horrors on Winged Feet.


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I AM ALMOST DONE

32

In retrospect that was, perhaps, a sub-optimal course of action.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it was bad. Let's not get all judgemental here. 

The ground sighed, sinking into depressions that caused the servers to buckle in their harnesses. Bolted to the ground, they followed it down, and screams of columnar hardware, pulled between sagging ground and rigid ceiling, briefly overrode echoes of gunfire. 

The voices in my head paused, and the whispers of guilt hesitated. Very distantly, my internal remonstrations asked, "Nah, you didn't-"

Oh, but I did.

We heard the rumble first. Sound travels fast coming up through stone. The ground quaked, tearing iron trusses, and shattering stones. Spiderwebs of cracks pooled in sinkholes as cavities formed in the floor. The Tiger left Floyd to sprint madly for the door. Hank was a little shellshocked, nothing serious, and his enemy's sudden flight left him disoriented. Floyd began to sweat. 

The Serpent was crumpling with his back broken, but he bleated, "-really summon-" before Karen silenced him with her first. He ate ground. Nick stood up. 

Mary was the only one I saw, running deeper into the server forest, and I fixated on her back. She ran weird. Not normally. Mary, I meant. Her habitual manner of running wasn't weird. But when she was distracted, when she wasn't thinking, she ran funny. Her legs didn't piston evenly. Her right and left sides didn't move in tandem unless she made them, and she was distracted. 

"Wizard guy?" yelled Hank, going up in pitch and volume.

I was a little delirious, so I said, "Don't worry about it. It should be fine. I mean, she's not really running hot servers on the hellfire protocol. It's reverse heat, you know? It doesn't spread. It steals enthalpy and makes itself hotter while inflicting cold. But that was just a thermodynamic thought experiment Mary and I liked to hash out. Fantasy physics. It wouldn't actually work."

"Martin!" yelled Karen.

"I mean, you can run if you're a weenie," I admitted. "But she isn't doing it because she couldn't get rid of it. That's the problem with the hellfire thought experiment. It spreads. You'd have to feed it to something, and Farmers won't farm Fire. It's forbidden."

I was now being moved up the elevator shaft at an extremely impressive rate of speed. Nick was some eight legged car mutation with wheels and immense engines, roaring up the elevator shaft. Everything shook. Sound chased us, smashing into walls and reverberating with tactile force. The roar echoing up from below could be felt as it transcended being heard, and lions of roar warred in the shaft. Nick was driving, Hank was yelling, Karen was screaming something, and Floyd admitted, quietly, that he really wished he'd gotten around to drawing a trump of Canada. He had been so meaning to do it.

We exited the elevator thirty meters up, blasting through the tyvek and soaring, and hellfire rose to the Empire.

I leaned in close to Karen and whispered. "We used to talk about hypothetical stat-mech after sex." I waggled my eyebrows at her. "We were nerds."

Seven-ish stories of glass skinned skyscraper exploded. Glass splinters shredded buildings, cars, and trucks. The frame of the building caught fire and burned, stinking of sulphur and brimstone, rushing along the i-beams as they transformed into immense iron wicks. Asphalt caught fire in the parking lot, and then the shrapnel began to fall, freezing cold. Couches and tables hurled by the blast shattered on impact, sucking heat out of the desert and shooting frost patterns like snowflakes through the sand. The explosion was evil. It hated. And when the initial blast was done, the Empire remained a burning monolith, taller than Uluru, and raised in spite against it. 

As we fell Nick started wrestling with wheels to wings, and the ground rushed up terribly fast. 

"What was that?" whispered Floyd in awe.

"The first part," I replied. "The doorway for the Horrors."

They all looked at me.

"It was bigger than expected," I admitted.

A ghost burst from the fires, long limbed and white-cloaked, burning in black and cold. It stopped in mid-air, searching for a target.

Another rushed to follow and another, three in total. It was then we noticed the Tiger running across the ground. He had escaped the blast, but black hands broke through the ground to claw at his feet. For the first time we noticed great manacles about his wrists. They had always been there, but even in memory I don't think we had just missed them. The Tiger was infected, burning black, and running to escape the fire on his back. It did nothing. He left frozen footprints, and sand and dirt cracked at his passage. The fires got into his eyes, and he screamed.

"Mary?" whispered Floyd, looking out over the desert. He wasn't certain about the name. "Is it Mary?"

"I think so," I said. "Why?"

"There." He pointed.

A smaller gout of flame was blazing in the desert, having consumed a small tourist-information center of cement faux-logs. Mary emerged. Her eyes were wild, filled with anger, and her appearance wavered. Something around her lapsed in and out of the world. She was tall and short at the same time, red-headed and brown-haired. She looked at us, floating well above the nightmare on Nick's back.

"You left me," Mary whispered. "You left me again."

"Oh, dear," said Karen. 

"Oh, no," whispered Nick.

"Fly faster," ordered Floyd.

"Oh, God, I'm so sorry," I thought, and I don't know if I said it out loud or not.

Suddenly, we all looked up at the same time, and hanging in the evening sky we saw Death. She rode a pale horse and carried a grim sword. Her four followers rose to meet her: the Mantis, Spider, Serpent, and the Tiger at last consumed by fires and his own bad bargains.

"DEATH!" screamed Mary in a voice of fire. "I have calculated five hundred of the names of God, and I offer them as a bargain! Kill Martin."

Death looked at us, and her followers saw those they had hunted in life. 

Nick hit the ground and shifted, losing the cumbersome assemblage of wings for wheels. He lengthened into a broad platform, wide tires, and a glass frame over his head, turned to steel. He roared towards the road to Yulara, but Karen slapped him and shouted "East! Towards the Rock!" He obliged.

Death's guant horse reared, hooves scything the air, and her followers lifted ivory horns to their lips. They blew, and white runes burned through the sky, searing through the blue heavens like space itself was merely a skein drawn across writing of fire. They formed a contract in magic, a legal document with power behind it and runes to drive it, and a name, Martin Wilson, as both payment and the target. Death signed it with a skull. Mary signed five hundred names, and her pen screamed as she wrote.

We were not going fast enough. 

Floyd paused Nick, stepped down, and took a short stick to the grass on the side of the road. He slashed and jotted. Karen was bouncing on the balls of her feet watching Mary sign the contract, but Floyd was unconcerned. His sketch took only a moment, and then he calmly drove Hank's destroyed car out of the sand. It was in perfect shape with a full tank of gas.

"Nothing but respect," the little artist told Nick. "But we need specialization here."

"No worries. I'm not a car much," admitted the shapeshifter.

We understood. The five of us piled into Hank's machine, and we travelled. 

For Hank the accelerator pedal is a force of evil. There's a point in his car beyond which the speedometer doesn't go. It's blank, like the void, with "madness" stenciled in white. Mary struck her deal with Death, and Death and her horsemen gave chase. 

Floyd thought out loud. "The problem with your Toronto idea, Martin, is that I'm pretty sure Death can chase us there or back. Yeah, I could get us there, but it doesn't do much good. We can run, but we can't hide."

"Okay," I agreed.

Karen looked at me, and then leaned forward and pulled my eyelids down. She stared at my pupils. 

"Oh, biscuits," she muttered.


	33. 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 8.16x10^47

33

Hank took the S-Class off-road. He did so insecurely, muttering about how this wasn't a good idea and looking at Death in the rear-view mirror. However he did it, tossing the car down a winding path with sand traps and the stems of locust-eaten weeds. The car complained bitterly. He front-ended into the crevice that lead under the rock, and we fled towards the hole where Prometheus waited.

Karen explained her plan. "Remember when the Mantis showed up with the scythe? I'm betting it was Death's, and I feel like if we're going to do anything about her, we need her own weapon to do it. The Spider took it in the Hall of the Rock, and we never got it back because Mathy said it was full of treachery. But, you know, Death, so we need it now."

That explanation lasted the entire time between Hank getting his car, driving like a maniac, and crashing at the defile that lead under Ayer's Rock. We scampered in and down, where the air stank of sulfur.

In the hall where we expected to find Mathy, we found Karesh Ni.

It was a peculiar place. The ground descended from the rock in a broken asymptotic well. What should have been a clean curve was marred with stalagmites and broken stones, cracked teeth that cut unpleasantly through the bedrock like errant wisdom teeth cutting through gums. It seethed with poisonous odors. Smoke from the flames lay thick as oil, and sometimes ignited itself, laying levels of burning clouds over fiery ground and raining molten glass and acid. 

Titans hung from the ceiling, manacled and twisted. Many had their hands bound together behind their backs and swung from the roof. The lucky ones had their wrists connected to their waists by chains. Those less fortunate were left to bend, bodies pulling towards the pit and arms bent towards heaven, and their shoulders bulging with the veins of tormented muscles. They writhed and fought. Some screamed. Some cursed. Some tormented each other. None prayed. Each bore a lock of white-hot steel on their wrists. All burned.

We froze, dumbfounded. As the titans saw us, they began to scream. Some cursed us for being free. Some demanded that we liberate them. Many invoked terrors on us, and some spewed formless noise that resembled the chaos before creation, deprived of the form of words. Worst were those that screamed at us about ourselves. They knew things, terrible things, and swore with our own dark secrets.

In unison we turned back to the outside and found Death in the gateway. 

"Does anyone have any ideas, any ideas at all, other than fighting?" asked Karen. "Do not stay quiet. Share with the group."

Nick stared at the rocks and stalactites, wheels in his head turning, but professed he didn't have any clues. Floyd drew and discovered his sketches had no depth. Karen, fatalistically, limbered her arms and shoulders as Death advanced, and I did nothing of any use. 

"Yeah! Run!" suggested Hank and sprinted into the nightmare. Death advanced, and we took off.

Hank scampered across a line of black rocks that seethed with ugly fires. He skittered between blowholes of green flame and hopped over pools that burned down. Ridges of blackened granite marched to great precipices, and sallied over abysses with nethers wrapped in fumes. 

Dashing to the edge of one with Death gaining from behind, Hank took leave of his senses and the ground to jump from ridgeline to a titan's bound back. It was like watching acrobatics in a perspective-illusion room. He leaped as a normal sized human and landed as a flee on the howling titan's shoulder, not shaking the giant enough to get him tumbling. Hank sprinted over the surging back and tormented muscle to leap again, picking an airborne path away from death. The giant cursed, flecks of spittum dropping into the blazes to skitter like living things across the ground. 

"Nah," whispered Karen, but she jumped as well. We followed.

With a sense like predestination we came to a giant who had a smaller figure manacled to his back. Underneath the arch of the titan's arms, between his fists and his spine, a human-sized figure stood with his arms bound to the giant's wrists and his feet buckled to the titan's belt. This was merely a curiosity until Death, charging hard in pursuit, halted. Her horse reared, kicking up a scrabble of secondary flames, and the Horsemen halted shrieking. They looped the titan like sharks. 

Karesh Ni smiled at us and calmly unlocked his manacles. "Welcome to Hell."

We looked at him. He smiled again.

"Tartarus, specifically," he added. "Get used to it, because you'll be staying here for a very long time. I encourage you to look to the bright side, the left, where the burning secretions of that howling chap have taken on the semblance of life and are eating his insides. You may regard how Death awaits outside, and as much as you might wish to give yourself to her tender embrace, that is no longer an option. Please regard your feet."

There was a power in his words that demanded obedience. We looked down. Bolted into the agonized flesh of the giant's back were chains laid securely about our ankles. 

Karesh Ni pleasantly removed the bolts from his own ankles, and they fell away.

"There are a couple of rules to this place, and my favorite one is to do as much harm as possible. So I would like to take a moment to tell you of yourselves. You are damned. In this place you cannot stop me any more. The damned cannot halt the damned, only harm them and through sharing multiply their misery. But happiness is a comparative thing. By making you more miserable than I, my world is made better, and I am an expert at that. 

"Welcome to Hell," he said again and luxuriated in his freedom.

 

"Her name is Merriam Gendhorf. Mary, I called her. She's a mathematician."

They looked at me, except for Nick who was staring at his feet. Floyd and Karen said nothing. Hank made slight go-on motions.

"We met while I was doing my PhD in modelling. She was doing hers in optimization. Will I offend anyone if I backtrack over optimization?" I asked, and they indicated I would not. 

"I did brute force. I had a reasonably small problem, so I filed for time on the supercomputer, and just ran the program until I got answers. That's fine. That's what brute force means, just throw processor power and RAM at the problem until it goes away. Every heard of brute force dating? It's pretty funny in the comp sci field. You go to a bar and ask every prospective partner out. If you have a one percent success rate, you just need to ask fifty people for an even chance of success. Funny. You can find fifty people in bar. Don't call it brute force dating. Outside comp sci, that has a different meaning."

I smiled. No one smiled back.

"Mary optimized. She rewrote her equations to minimize calculation steps. She weeded out huge chunks of false answers, and had her code bypass those calculations. She only asked out one person, but she looked pretty when she did it. I get it now.

"There're only about forty runes. Each rune can only be used once in a spell. So the longest spell can be forty runes long. That means there's a finite number of spells, so in theory, we should just calculate them all and they can't be discovered, right?" I looked at them. They looked like they were following.

"Except that number is forty factorial. It's about eight with forty zeroes behind it. Let's say you had the fastest computer on Earth running one combination per cycle, impossible, but let's pretend, and calculating each combination exactly once. It would need to run from the big bang to heat death of the universe." I paused. "Several times. It's an unfathomable number. Forty factorial sounds so small. I can count to forty in half a minute. Math. 

"Mary optimizes. You don't need to calculate anything that involves the Silence, because you don't want to use any spell which has that in it. You don't need to calculate anything that isn't hexagonally branched linear. You can bring the calculations down. That's what she does. That's where the real money is, you know. Big data has lots of big computers, but math beats big computers every day. They throw money at people like Mary.

I sighed. "I'm exaggerating a little. You can't really brute force even simple problems. I went looking for a math grad student to optimize my code, and Mary was looking for code to optimize. We got together, we did a little physics, we did a little math, had some sex, and I asked her to marry me. Martin wants to marry Mary. It was our joke." I smiled. I felt like death. "We were nerds."

I looked at them. No one said anything. Karen, Hank, and Floyd were listening, and Nick was staring at his feet like he couldn't figure out why they weren't changing. He didn't really believe in Hell yet. I did. We did. I understood.

I licked my lips. My tongue was dry and did nothing. "And then she had a stroke."

"I waited for two months. I fed her with a tube. I stayed in the hospital, and she didn't talk. She couldn't move. Her face was broken. If I didn't wipe the drool away every hour she would get blisters where it dried. I changed her diaper and turned her over, and made sure the IV didn't get twisted. Sometimes she moved. They said the brain scan couldn't conclusively rule out brain activity. I talked about physics with her, and she said nothing."

It took a bit to continue.

"And she was never going to. After two months she was never going to get better. She was never going to talk. She was never going to laugh. She was never going to look at me again. But she was going to live for a very long time. Medicine is amazing. She was going to live to a ripe old age, and someone would need to be with her, change her diaper, wipe her face, and talk to a board for all that time. It was like being alone, except I loved her, and she was right there, reminding me of every laugh we had, every joke, all the math and science and interests and-" I swallowed. "And she was going to be like that until we both died.

"So I ran. I called her parents and I told them I was leaving, and I ran. And four days later I was arrested for drunk driving, only I wasn't really drunk and I wasn't really driving, and I went to jail, and I got into fights in jail because I wanted to die, and I went to solitary, and sometime after that there was a problem because a lot of people in jail hadn't really been drunk and hadn't really been driving, and I got out of jail and someone told me, come to the Immaculate Eye. We can do magic. We can do anything. And I did not think of Mary again for many years. I was in a desert in Australia with her handiwork staring me in the face, and I didn't think of her. I got tortured in a room of hot servers that she had explained to me how she intended to invent, and I didn't think about her.

"And now we're all here, and that's why," I said and stopped talking.


	34. Chapter 34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapters are getting shorter. There are a few reasons. First, there's a lot more plot work happening on the back-end, if you will. More of my writing time is devoted to tracking down little details and checking my notes against execution. I'm trying to wrap up as many threads as possible in the most satisfying manner. 
> 
> Most Satisfying =! Happiest
> 
> Secondly, there's a lot of stuff happening, but it's very compressed. The crew isn't spending a whole lot of time in one place. They're running about, and that makes for short chapters. Chapters in KG are really more like scenes, but I am in chapters steeped so far, stage directions would be as perilous as going on.
> 
> Third point was that the calculation in the last chapter regarding total possible number of runic constructs is more complicated the closer I looked at it. Runes aren't consistent or commutative. 4x6 = 6x4, but Fire-Alchemist is very different from Alchemist-Fire, to say nothing of Fire-Alchemist - {construct} is wildly different from Fire-Alchemist-{Other construct}. I had a big post on the mechanics of it, but deferred. Take my word for it, it gets weird.

34

After speaking I crouched down on my haunches. I didn't sit, because I didn't know if more manacles would appear, but I squatted with my face in my hands. No one spoke. Karen looked like she wanted to make a motion, but we were all chained down more than arms reach apart. Nick looked baffled. He stretched, but his arms were just arms. His feet remained feet. The manacles on his ankles didn't release.

Floyd looked at Karen with a hint of challenge. She looked away. 

"Enjoy your suffering, victims!" Karesh Ni broke the silence strolling towards us. He didn't walk. He sauntered, rolled, and danced. Every few steps he stuttered his feet and spun. Years of fire had burned away his skin and dessicated his flesh. His head was a bare skull, cemented to his shoulders with exotic scarves and beads; his fingers were only bones to hold his many rings. From cowl to sole he dripped wealth, power and health, with close-cut clothes showing his lean organless stomach and curved artfully to compliment his legs. 

When he got to Nick he gestured in mid-air.

"Mire under Miles, singled into- he's putting a what into where?" I muttered to myself as Karesh Ni wrote. His finger leaked oily smoke that cascaded and frothed from his nail. The power took it over, Nick froze, and the sorcerer took Nick's watch. 

"That was supposed to be mine-"

"We lied, fool!" shouted the lich and summoned a gallows chariot. It came pulled by a harnessed swarm of biting flies, lifting from the shadows below where the spit of raging titans burned. It was woven of lightning, and the wheels sounded like thunder. Karesh Ni barely gloated as he scampered aboard and bade Death begone.

She glowered at him and submitted.

"So long, twinkles!" he yelled and rode back towards Earth. Death and her horsemen hid themselves at his passing, and the titans roared in agony to see someone else escape. 

 

"Nick." Karen smiled sweetly. "Do you have something you'd like to share with the group?" 

"I guess when someone says they can raise the dead, they're leaving a couple of key details blank," said Nick as he slumped joint by joint from the neck down. "Like who. She never said she could raise- Wait, no, fuck that bitch! She said she could raise anyone! She said it all the time! This amulet will protect you from death and age! That bitch lied to me!"

"Nick, there are details you're leaving out, right now," observed Floyd in a helpful tone.

"The bitch in league with the lich! She lied!"

"And I'm sure she feels very bad about it. Nick, what are you talking about?" demanded Karen.

"What?" yelled Nick. "I did bad things and made deals with bad people! Who cares about the details?"

"I want the details!" yelled Karen.

"Guys, guys, guys," said Floyd. "Present location considered, I think we should really avoid shouting at each other."

"Everyone else is!" snapped Karen.

True to her word, the titans were at this point hurling abuse at each other and speaking dire threats to us all.

"Yes, let's not be like them," said Nick. 

Karen and Nick paused and seemed nonplussed regarding Floyd's abjuration. They gave each other side-eye. 

"And you," said Floyd to me. "Reach down, grab your balls, and magic us out of here."

"I got nothing," I admitted.

"Then I'll do it!" Floyd considered. "Actually, we probably should do this as a team. Dammit, if we find out that friendship is the real reward all along, I'll shank you three myself."

"Well-" I said after a moment.

They looked at me.

"I guess that isn't precisely true," I added. "I do have one thing of power."

"Friendship?" asked Karen. She looked like she'd discovered her avocado was unripe after she'd eaten it. 

"What?" asked Floyd.

"No. Verdant Cataclysm. It's an expensive one, though, and I've got no power for it. I don't even have any links. Anyone got any magic rings or receptacles of power they can donate to the cause?"

Floyd had a few hand-drawn cards. We tried them. No luck.

"Aw well," said Floyd, shuffling them back into his pocket.

"I liked them," I said. Situation considered, maybe a little kindness wouldn't hurt. "The Seattle one was nice."

Floyd shot me a low, flat look. "That's Toronto, you ass."

"Sorry. Hell. Messing with the words. Occluding my vision." I pointed at our environs.

Floyd gave me the lowest, flattest look he had, and I turned to Karen, quickly so it didn't look like I was avoiding him. "Rings of power?"

"No," said Karen quietly.

"Nick?"

"The zombie took it," Nick replied angrily.

"Lich, not a- oh, whatever. Fak."

"That wouldn't work anyway," said Floyd. "Lots of you magician types have to have died. You're not constantly popping up and running around. Ergo, it can't just be a matter of doing some sorcery and coming back to life, or it would have been done."

"Then what do you want to do?" I asked, perhaps demanded, and Floyd didn't have an answer.

Hank did. "Oy, yo Death! Do you want to play a game?" called the driver out into the shadows.

"My man," whispered Floyd and shook his fist in victory. Hank nodded.

Over the howls and curses of the giants we heard nothing, but Death came creeping around the side. She stole over the shoulder of Tethys, whose wet, hacking coughs spewed foam into the pit, and perched on his head, staring at us. We twisted where we stood and tried to look in all directions, yet she still managed to surprise us when her old, dry voice asked, "Game?"

"Yeah. A game. Do you play games?"

"Oh, child," whispered Death, and she smiled old, grey teeth.

"A race? Cars across the pit floor? But none of that teleportation silliness. You put your butt in a seat, and drive a car me mate here gets for you." Hank tried to slap Floyd's shoulder, but they were too far apart and wound up flailing at each other like chickens. Death got the point though.

"Three times round the pit?" she suggested. "For what wager?"

"We'll go to your kingdom for all times?" offered Karen.

Death looked at her to them, and back to her. She smiled again. "Of course."

The Horsemen rode wide to form four points, and Death waved her hand. Bone chariots appeared to carry us down, and manacles parted at her grasp. The pit floor was bitterly cold with a ruthless wind, one that insinuated into itself into our clothing. Giant-abuse from above berated us, our manners, and threatened. Death waved her hand and Floyd drew a car, another black Mercedes but dark and long with gullwing doors. It crouched like a raptor. Hank piled in, got it running, and started whispering with Karen.

Death smiled devilishly, but of course she couldn't hear their conversation. They were whispering. 

Floyd calmly produced a Holden Ute with two flat tires, bad oil pressure, and unpleasant smells wafting from the engine.

Death smiled even broader as she entered the driver's door, reclined in her seat, and prepared herself. With one hand she removed the gear-shift and inserted her scythe into the transmission. It sank like a knife into water. Karen stood between them and lifted a scrap of cloth like a flag, as Nick and I got clear. Hank nodded that he was ready, and stretched his hands on the wheel. 

Floyd trumped Death to Canada.

Zip, boop, they were gone, and Karen stared bewildered. Hank stared bewildered. Nick, who was still trying to look cool, let his mouth fall open in shock. I babbled.

"Attack!" screamed her Horsemen, and they charged from the corners. 

Four people piled into a small two-seater and fast, and Hank unleashed the sound and the fury.


	35. 35

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm almost done! 
> 
> Let me know if there are any plot threads I forgot, but they should all get wrapped up in the end.

Hank drove casually for the exit. The exhaust was a fury, and the windshield a river as fires that cast more shadow than light led behind us, tracing green and white paths on the glass. The path as erratic and unstable. Beasts above hollered. Hank applied the angry pedal with finesse and tact.

"We are going to die," said Nick.

"Shut up, and get your knee out of my face," replied Karen.

It was actually my knee, but I didn't say anything.

Given how we'd Tetrised ourselves into the car, I was wrapped around the passenger seat and shoved into the small space between the back of the seats and the rear windshield. Nick and Karen were cubicly stacked, with Nick's face being firmly inserted in the between-the-seats storage cubby and Karen, butt on windshield, head on knee, wrapped over his body. Hank yelled at her to get out of the way of his rear view mirror.

"You're not missing anything," I told him as the maniac flicked through gears, swerving around stones and spires. The giants rained curses down on our heads, and their words had tangible form, striking the Earth and breaking rock. 

"How far back are they?" he yelled.

"Closer than they appear."

He put the car sideways and drifted around ugly spires. The horsemen were gaining. They came from the corners, grim figures on guant horses. I could still see remnants of who they had been. The Mantis was still a big man in sweats; the Serpent wore suits. Yet there were shadows behind them, cast by wind and fire, that swept from their backs like dark cloaks. Their horse-hooves cast wakes of sparks. More dangerous was how their eyes didn't glint, but sank into their heads. Even the Tiger was thinner than he had been. His hollow cheeks barely stretched over his jaw and cheekbones. They rode fast, and they were gaining.

Hank muttered something about a plan, and turned. We picked up the Spider, and the foursome behind made a pack. Hank turned again and did some trickery. He drifted wide around a stalagmite that lifted towards the giant Tethy's, near whom the horsemen dared not go. They shied, taking a path well wide of Hank's apex. It gave him speed. From there he took a bent line that drifted towards each beast. The horsemen refused to chase him into proximity with the titans and ceded time. He started grinning.

"Isn't this how you nearly died?" Karen muttered. The engine drowned her out. It was probably for the best.

We hit the chute to outside as reaching chains writhed in the cave-mouth and manacles snapped like claws. They marked the car but did not catch. Infuriated, they snapped for the Horsemen with human anger, and snagged at horse legs. Our pursuers raged at them, and we gained valuable seconds.

Hank took the turns at speeds best described as lunatic, looped a corner, made for the exit and sailed wide from under the rock into the wall of Mathy's hall. 

The car halted and rattled, and pebbles dropped from the undercarriage. Karen threw her door open, through Nick out, and then emerged herself with some measure of grace. I crawled out as well. Hank yelled about how the Horsemen of Death were chasing us, but we were having none of that nonsense.

"Greetings, my friends, to the Hall of Rock, Under the Rock," said Mathy on the wall.

"Mathy, what's going on?" demanded Karen without looking at Nick. "Why are you chained up?"

"For crimes of charity, I am bound to the gateway of Hades, in sight of Earth, on the cusp of Elysium, and forever refused admission," replied the giant.

"Why do they always talk in riddles?" demanded Nick of no one.

"Ah, shut up. You're one of those people who asks questions about accounting and gets pissed when the answer involves math," I replied. "Mathy, we met your kin. They're a bunch of bastards."

"Well, yes," replied the giant. 

"Guys, we need to be going!" yelled Hank.

"Patience is a virtue!" yelled Karen. 

"And why am I still human?" hissed Nick, and he went back to staring at his hands.

"All right, Mathy. We aren't doing this again. Your situation sucks, and if I have to suck down the humility of admitting we can't get you out, we aren't leaving you to your problems unaided," I said. 

Karen nodded. "Can we do something for you?"

"Alas, no. I am bound to a rock like Gibraltar. I have the wind and sometimes rain, and my books."

"Yeah, but do you want, like, a plant or something?" said Karen. 

"I would, but it is not possible. The gateways bar access from anything green and growing."

I stared at him. I stared at the passageway to Tartarus where the giants dwelt, and the Horsemen were even now fighting their way through manacles that creeped like vines. I looked back at Mathy.

"About that," I said and grinned. 

Verdant Cataclysm: The Cambrian Explosion, weaponized. Trees burst out of the ground and threw shrapnel of leaves. Roots tore through granite and burst into leaf. Barren earth kicked up flowers that grew so fast whiplash threw seedpods as the slings and arrows of Abrahamic warfare. For a brief instant the low plants pollinated each other across distances by the power only of magic and multiplicity. Generations grew in moments. The crackle of trees sprouting, aging, dying, and growing again rumbled through the cavern, and immense wide-bodied climbers clogged the passageway down and out. If the Horsemen got through that, they weren't going to do so easily.

The sea of foliage came nearly to Mathy's feet and thrummed.

"Now, did an old guy come through here recently? Dressed richly, but he looked like a skeleton wrapped in leather?" I asked.

Mathy looked at the sea the green at his feet and up at me. "Yes. He rode a chariot of bone and gristle, leaving above."

"Right," I said, pleased. If this was the gateway into dawn, we didn't really know where Karesh Ni would be going. It made sense for him to return to Earth to orgy his black little heart out, but there was no certainty about it. Mathy's words reassured me we weren't going to have to chase him down through the Aether or anything. I turned to the others.

"The fuck was that?" yelled Hank, pointing at my summoned viridiplantae. 

"Verdant Cataclysm," I said. I looked down at it, and looked up at him. "There actually should be animals too, but for some reason they never show up. I don't know why."

"What is with people bringing foreign life into 'Straya! There have been problems with that!" continued Hank at volume.

"Okay, perhaps," I shrugged.

"No! Fuck you people! You don't get to unleash that after bringing us into and then out of there-" He pointed a thumb through the wall at Tartarus. "-and then unleash that and act blase about it!" His accent had shifted to California US, somewhere about LA. 

"Are you upset?" asked Karen.

"Yes, I'm upset!" screamed Hank. Definitely LA. "You people come in, you fuck all sort of shit up, and if anyone acts surprised you act like it's their fault for not knowing what a Verdant Cataclysm is! We're in Australia! It's not fucking Narnia! Fuck you for acting like I'm too stupid to know the rest of the world, and fuck you for not telling me what the fuck that fucking is so you can act like I'm too stupid to understand it the next time!"

We were silent for long moments, and then Nick said, "If it makes you feel better, I have no idea what's going on either."

"You're a shape-shifting murderer!" yelled Hank.

"You have got me there," admitted Nick.

"Speaking of which!" demanded Karen. "How could you kill Allison?"

Nick recoiled. "I didn't!"

"You son of a bitch, you said you made dark deals with bad people! Karesh Ni required a living sacrifice to escape hell, but he took your watch, and you wanted to avoid death, so you killed Allison to trade for escaping death yourself!" Karen waved her fists at him. Nick watched her fists carefully.

I looked at Hank. "Verdant Cataclysm. Compound rune structure, sometimes called a spell, but spell is a broad term and people call all sorts of things spells. Rune structure is more specific. Do you want to learn?"

"To do that?" he asked, pointing at the greenery.

"Not that," I clarified. "But rune magic in general."

Nick screamed back at Karen. "I did not! You bitch! I wasn't even there when she died! I was pretending to be someone else, the Serpent, with Floyd and Martin while it happened! Even if I did, I didn't have the watch in the kangaroo graveyard!"

"So you had it on order!" snarled Karen.

"Why can't I learn to do that?" demanded Hank.

"I thought you didn't want to do that! Weren't you just yelling at me about me rabbiting Australia again?" I couldn't win.

"That's no reason not to let me do it!" yelled Hank.

I was confused.

"No!" raged Nick. "I gave them my life! Mine! I gave them years of me so I could live longer. I don't want the last few, living in fear of dying, knowing any time I go to sleep I could shift back into heart failure and die. They were mine! I gave them up as a trade, and they stole them from me!"

Karen opened her mouth, shut it, and blew air out her nose while puffing up her cheeks. "Oh."

"Dude, that doesn't make any sense," I told Hank.

"So Australians are too primitive to talk?" he demanded.

I blinked at him.

"That's what I hate. That if you act weird, you're just weird, but everything I do is 'Australia' and if there's anything I don't know, it's because my country is fucked." Hank crossed his arms over his chest and glowered at me.

"The fuck is going on with your accent?" I blabbed. "Seriously, where are you from?"

"I'm from Sydney!" he said with a sharp, sullen pout. "But I learned to talk like all of you so you can't judge me for it."

"I did not think of that," admitted Karen to Nick.

"So you leaped to accusing me of murder?" he demanded.

"You did say you're a shape-shifting assassin," she replied.

Nick opened his mouth, paused, and reconsidered. "Yeah, but not like that. We actually don't kill people. We take contracts from contractors, his people-" Nick nodded his head at me. "To give them cover when they're performing contracts on other people."

I whirled on him. "You do!?"

Nick nodded. "It's how your best work. It only works if it's a secret, so we don't tell people."

"You work for the Rooster?" I gasped.

"He's my best client. Easy work. One time I played with puppies for half an hour and made a fortune."

My mouth fell open.

"So you didn't murder Allison in a faustian deal for power?" asked Karen.

Nick looked her right in the eyes. He reached out and took her hands, and while maintaining eye contact said, "No." in a clear, unequivocal voice.

She stared at him, unsure if she wanted to believe.

"Now kiss!" yelled Hank.

They turned in unison and tried to glare him to death.

"See?" Hank said to me.

"Spot fucking on," I admitted. "Anyway, do you want to learn to be a magician or not?"

"Yeah, sure," he said in perfect imitation of my voice.

"Cool. Let's ride."


	36. 36

36

"So what's the plan?" said Nick, when we were again driving through the desert towards Ayer's Outpost. I was on the seat, Karen was in my lap, and Nick was in, around, and laced throughout the car. Only Hank had freedom of movement.

"We find him. Martin drops the unhappy, I punch him, you transform to counter whatever magical devilry he counter attacks with, and then Hank drives us away from the ensuing explosion very fast," said Karen.

"That's not a very complex plan," said Hank.

"Simplicity is key," asserted Karen.

I rained on their parade. "There is one problem though, and that's that I have no unhappy left. My last racked spell was Verdant Cataclysm."

"So can't you rack another?" asked Hank.

I hemmed. "That question isn't really relevant. It's not hard, but a fast rack is hours, and we're, like, right here."

As I spoke Hank drew up before the towering inferno of malicious green hellfire that polluted the earth and sky. In a purely literal sense, the world was a worse place for this existing.

I didn't feel bad about breaking the Desolation. Yes, in retrospect it was a bad idea, but that's absurd hindsight. The fact that she was manipulating a thermodynamic impossibility to drive a supercomputer cluster isn't the sort of combination any reasonable person would expect. It was like she was huffing spray-paint to keep her super-AIDS at bay. Also the spray paint was on fire. In a fireworks factory.

"So a rack is a song?" asked Hank while I justified myself to myself.

"Yeah. It's a song you get caught in your head for the rest of your life. You put the runes to it, and they hang in harmony. It lets you cast them fast while preparing them slow." I wasn't really paying attention.

"Karesh Ni has one?" asked Hank, a seeming detail. 

"He'd have too. He dropped some form of paralysis on Nick much faster than he could free hand it."

"Oh." Hank nodded to himself. He looked over, like he was going to point out some trivia. "It goes-" he said and started to sing.

We stared at him.

He said to me, "When you cast, you cast with a tune. I heard him use a tune when he paralysed you," Hank addressed Nick. "But I wasn't sure if it was the same thing. If it is, that's his rack."

None of us had stopped looking at him. I was making faces. Nick was unmaking faces, as his mouth and nose flexed in conflict. Karen squinted like he was a martian.

"I listen to a lot of music in the car," admitted Hank. "I'm teaching myself to sing. And Chinese!  
Ni hao!" He looked so pleased with himself.

"That's-" I licked my lips. "That's his transmission key."

As the consequences of Hank's blase admission rolled in, it was Karen who spoke first. "Does that mean you can hack Karesh Ni and steal his magic?" She sounded like she didn't believe it.

"Yes," I said, and I know I didn't believe it.

"The magic the bad guy composed entirely while trapped in Hell?" asked Nick. "That's the magic you're going to steal?"

"Yes," I said.

"Here we go," said Nick, and we went towards the dark.

 

We decided to go for a subtle approach. Hank had spent a lot of time mapping jumps in the desert, and we chose a suitable one, launched the Mercedes, and took Karesh Ni out of his chariot with AA GT while he was distracted by noxious fires of malignant death. The sorcerer was talking with Mary when the AMG fell out of the sky, and before any of them really knew what was going on, Karen ran out of the wilderness and punched him in the head. Nick fell as meteors and laid destruction upon them.

"This is bullshit," opined Hank, as he and I stole along a rivulet.

"You can't fly. Calm down and listen for the lightning."

"It was my car!"

"No, it was Floyd's car, and we're not talking about him because he's alive. In Canada," and thankfully, Hank didn't say anything at all after that.

As I had been with the Spider, Karesh Ni was completely overwhelmed by Karen once she closed range. He couldn't get a word out. She beat him in the face and shoulders, snapped his head back and forth, and every time he tried to muster his power, she silenced him. He gasped for air. The bone chariot had been close to the ground, and it was down now, leaving Mary to take the opportunity to run. Nick hemmed between chasing her and helping Karen, ultimately choosing to chase the runner. Mary had had a moment, though, and she said something into a phone before putting rounds at Nick. He dodged some and the rest didn't hit anything critical, and got close enough to put his hands on her.

She shot out his pelvis and ran. Nick crumpled, and Hank asked, "Now?"

I stared at him

"Do we go after her?" Hank asked.

"She's got a gun. What are we going to do?"

"Magic!"

I had a hard time forming words.

"Are you just not listening?" I demanded.

"Useless-ass wizards," muttered Hank and turned his back on me.

We were on the west side of the hellfire candle, opposite monolithic Uluru and facing the desert. The sun was considering setting as a lethargic hypothetical, a good idea eventually but certainly not worth the effort now. Oily black clouds stained the sky.

Nick put his hips back together and chased down Mary. I didn't really know what to think about that. Karen was extinguishing the lich. After some hesitation I loped southwards after the shapeshifter and my fiancee. She had always been resourceful, Mary had, and she was yelling into the phone, arranging something. I thought Nick was going to need some help. Maybe not. He was resourceful too. But yet- I chased the chase.

"Just throw the valves open and set all dials to BAD!" Mary yelled into the phone as Nick finally caught up with her. She emptied her weapon at him, but the snub-nose .22 was useless at range, and she wanted to keep him at range. He was a humanoid armadillo now, mailed and helmed with biological plates, skittering sideways to keep her guessing. Finally she threw the phone and went for her purse. Nick pounced in armor, so it took him half a dozen short hops.

Marry pulled out my papers, Ed-Financial's deed to my soul, and rolled them up like a paper telescope. 

"I own you, Martin! Stop him!"

She yelled in memories. I would have done it, but I had nothing left.

Mary was short, really short. I made fun of her for it, and she was furious about it, but she was adorably tiny. When we got snow she would come up to me, open my jacket, and climb in, facing my chest. She even worked out a way to zip the jacket up behind her. Inside she wrapped her arms around me and stayed. I used to expect a trick or cold fingers or something, but she didn't do that. She'd just hide in my jacket. Sometimes she stood on my feet, and then we walked around campus looking goofy. Goofy kids on a college campus. No one said a word.

We were in my kitchen one time, back when we both still had our own apartments, and she was doing something in the cabinet. I think she was making tea. She liked it loose leaf. Loose leaf, earl grey, sometimes green, she'd mix and match like an alchemist of old. 

I watched at her for a while and asked something overly indefinte. More hypothetical than question. A thought experiement.

"So, if when I get my PhD and, say, we were married, what would we do?"

She finished her concoction and took the kettle. She poured slowly, talking a lot of time. Hot water hit warm metal, and I smelled silver underneath the tea. They were her grandmother's spoons.

"Do you want kids?" she asked, stirring her cup but looking right at me.

"Not now, right now now. Not before I do my defense. Certainly not before one of us at least has a lead on a job. Definitely not before I get my PhD. Definitely not."

"So not before then?" she asked.

"I'm not saying not ever, but just not before I'm finished. And maybe not until one of us has a lead on a job."

"And after that?" she continued, still stirring.

"I mean, we could talk about it after that."

She nodded her head. 

There are all sorts of communication things I should have done. I had a list. I did none of them. My mouth was dry.

"Are you religious?" I asked.

"No." She answered directly. "No God. No devil. Are you?"

"My parents were. I don't go to church." Which she knew, of course. "But they did."

"Do you want to get married in a church?" she asked. She was so short, but I felt like I was staring up at her. She had to look through her eyebrows at me, and the steam curled around her fingers. 

"Ah. No. I don't really care. But if my parents are gone- well- if they're gone, they don't care either. But if they're gone, they are gone, but if they are gone but there's someplace else for them to be, then I think they'd like it if- ah- in a church."

"So if we were to get married, you'd like it to be in a church," she said, stirring, watching me.

Dry lips. Shallow breath. "When we do."

Mary put the cup down, to let it steep, obviously, and walked two steps over to me. She dove between my arms and held on. Her hands were hot from the teacup.

She liked to poke my belly. I'd be doing something up above, on the fridge or whatever, and she sneak over and grab my stomach. Then she'd squeeze. "Belly," she would cackle.

It wasn't sexy. It was cute. It was kinda sexy. It wasn't sexy like I thought about it. It was cute sexy, and she would squeeze my stomach and cackle, "Belly, belly, belly."

One time I asked her, "Do you want to have dinner at the top of the space needle?"

"Don't be an idiot," she replied. "We can't afford it."

"We could afford it once," I argued.

"No, we can't," she replied and turned to roller her eyes at me. She was folding laundry. I was helping. She liked to throw socks at me.

"We could afford it once," I said again.

This was almost a month after our conversation in the kitchen. 

Mary didn't say anything to that. She just watched me. Her hands were full of socks.

"We'll find a way to afford it once," I said, firmly. Very firmly. I was taking charge. "Unless you're scared of heights or something. You aren't, right?"

"No," she almost whispered. "I like heights."

The reservation wait was two weeks long. It was convention season. I almost stopped eating. I had bread sandwiches in the lab. Mary told me when she was alone, she'd go in her room and practice saying yes. Just yes. First she wanted to fake cry, and then she realized that she would real cry if she tried to fake it. She once said, "You know how you go up a tall building and look over, and you're so scared of falling that you have an incredible urge to jump? That's how I felt getting ready for the dinner. I was so terrified I'd say no by accident I practiced saying yes."

She didn't say no. Everything worked perfectly. We had candles and violin music, I proposed, she said yes, and that evening I carried her over the threshold into my apartment. There's no funny story. It worked out just fine. 

Mary told me to stop Nick, and she laid the will against me. I had no magic. My rack was empty. 

"Martin!" she yelled. Her fingers were white and cold, nails dark, lips pale. Her eyes were flushed. Stray hair floated like a halo, and she stood tall on thin heels.

Mary never wore heels. She wasn't one of those girls. Maybe those girls are tall? I don't know. 

"Don't do it!" I screamed, maybe at her, maybe at Nick, but Nick was having none of it. He went. She had her revolver in hand, six rounds in a speedie sliding into the cylinder, and Nick cut her down like a dog. She parted at the shoulders and hips.

I passed him, ran over, and reached for- nothing. She wasn't a person. She was meat and blood and a head, and guns and phones lying among reflecting brass. She was Erica, wide shouldered and tall, and Mary, small framed with glasses that fell down her nose. She used to bite me when she flirted. Or when she was annoyed. Or when she was bored. Something like mist at sunrise burned away, and I picked up her head.

"I love you, baby. I'm so sorry," I whispered.

Her lips moved, and her eyes fluttered, and then she died.

"Martin, I'm sorry," said Nick, but he wasn't, and instead of shutting up, he made excuses. "But she was making plans and-"

"Please don't say anything," I replied.

Nick looked at me, and waved, his hands blood-covered blades. His mouth closed slowly.

"I didn't get words in, and you have no idea how much I just wanted words," I whispered. "I didn't get words when she had a stroke, and I didn't get words when I ran, and I didn't get words now. I wanted words."

"Martin," whispered Nick, who kept talking.

Something shook the ground, some tremor split the earth, and something clicked underneath. The wick of the burning skeleton of the Empire Resort and Convention Center shuddered. At deep chasms out in the desert, pillars of hellfire erupted from the ground. They were green, red, and white, spewing ash and oil, and stinking. One by one they shattered the earth.

Elsewhere Karen finally hit Karesh Ni hard enough to break his jaw and bend his head sideways. The bony withered dome took a hard one hundred and twelve degree turn, flopping against his shoulder. It tipped and lolled backwards until the back of his skull rested on velvet-wrapped shoulderblades. He fell over.

Karen kept her fists up, but she paused. She looked around. She saw us across the desert, but couldn't make out details, and reconsidered the lich. He looked pretty dead.

"He looked dead to begin with," said Karen to herself out loud. "I mean, he was dead, a few times, but he really looks dead now."

She held her fist up like she was going to hit the body a few times and paused.

"How dead are you, relative to other times you've been dead?" she asked the grinning skull.

Fires broached the desert, rocks shattered, and lines of grey fire cut their way up through the ground. The earth shuddered. Karen retreated a few steps, and stopped, walking firmly back to Karesh Ni's grinning corpse. She stood affirmatively before him with her hands on her hips.

Burning points lifted up from the face of Uluru, and explosions crackled with shockwaves that sounded disturbingly like laughs.

"We're being less competitive, girl," Karen reminded herself before she turned and ran.

By the time Karen got to Nick, Hank was running towards us, and the shapeshifter explained matters to them both. He looked at her like he needed something.

"I don't blame you," said Karen. 

"Guys, I don't know what just happened, but Ayer's Rock is exploding, and only it's not kabooming, it's singing!" yelled the driver as he loped across the barrens. "And I recognize that tune!"


	37. Chapter 37

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The previous ending was rushed and didn't feel fleshed out. This is a new-ish ending. 
> 
> All the major questions should be answered, with the obvious exception of a few giant plot-hooks. I'm not sure I ever want to write a sequel, but I'm not sure I don't. There's room to work here. If you read it and think, "Yeah, but what happened to so-and-so next?" well, you found a plot hook. Assume they're hanging over the edge of a cliff.
> 
> Or they lived happily ever after. Up to you, really.

The sky turned black, and flames lit the false night. Hellfire formed rivers of molten rock running red over the desert. The Empire drew sulfur from the ground as it burned, and we could all hear the melody in the flames of Uluru. Mixing between those flames and the searing green from the broken rock happened miles overhead, where the columns met in a white glare. It washed out the horizon. Stars littered the ground like old cans from sloppy campers. Starlight bounced from ground to thin skein of white fire, stretched between the central dual spires of Empire and Uluru and the distant horizon while the smoke cloud threw volcanic lightning. It was a bad place to be, and even the lightning roared to a familiar, evil tune. 

Nick picked me up and tried to slap some sense into me. He overshot the first time and had to loop around once or twice more. I didn't say anything until Karen pulled Mary's head out of my arms, and Hank repeated his announcement.

"You can pick the tune out of that?" I asked. I wasn't really paying attention.

"Easily. I could hum it now, if you want," Hank offered.

"Don't do that," urged Karen. "Why isn't Karesh Ni dead? He was pretty dead. Why is he singing?"

"Ask the wizard," said Hank.

Nick shook me again. "Know sorcery stuff," he prompted.

"What do you want from me? You killed me fiancee while I watched, and you're complaining about liches now?" I was surprised I wasn't screaming. My voice was bewildered. 

He recoiled like struck. "But I had too!" yelled Nick, dropping me. He stepped back towards Karen. "I had too! She was shooting at me! She was in league with the bad guy!"

Karen vacillated fast, torn between two powerful truths. She looked for help, but neither Nick or I could give her anything. "Martin, I don't know if that was fair-"

"You mean like death?" I asked.

That took her in the gut, and Karen looked away. Nick retreated, and his skin, which had melted from armor back to human epidermis, was scaling over with leathery plates. I wouldn't look at them. Hank was caught between us, and with sudden undeniable relief, he stared up into space, reaching out his hand. A moment later, Floyd appeared.

"Cease your worries, my friends, the magic man has arrived!" yelled the little artist as he landed triumphantly before us.

"You don't know magic," I said.

"And you were only in Canada," added Karen.

"I'm from there. Do you want a donut for returning?" asked Nick.

"Sheesh, you are mean," Floyd grumbled. "But your negativity cannot stop me! I defeated death in a contest of art!"

That paused us. "You had a drawing contest with death?" asked Karen.

"No. I showed up, drew a line-sketch of Kansas, and fled before I could die!" Floyd grinned at us.

We stared at him flatly.

"Guys, it's a Kansas joke. It's easy to draw because you just need one line. I was raised in Fort Riley. Dudes, these are jokes," he added. 

"Shut up," said Nick.

Floyd rolled his eyes and took in the dome of fire. He blinked and said, "I see we're back in Hell."

"No, we aren't. We escaped," I snapped.

"There are giant pillars of evil fire. The sky is burning. Rivers of molten rock litter the ground, and the voices of the damned are howling," said Floyd in a peculiarly non-confrontational tone. 

"That's just Australia," I said.

"'Straya says fuck you too!" yelled Hank.

"Guys! Seriously! We're in Hell! Stop fighting! Fighting will not help!"

"So what do we do?" demanded Karen.

"I don't know. He's the wizard," muttered Floyd, pointing at me. I urged him to asexually reproduce.

"He's useless," said Nick. "He's pissed because I killed his evil ex-fiancee."

"You finally had to do it?" asked Floyd in some combination of relief, unhappiness, and disappointment.

Nick wasn't expecting that, so Floyd continued, "She tortured me. She held Karen and I, and tortured us. She's working for Karesh Ni, and she kills people. She's evil. But of course he-" Thumb at me. "-isn't going to agree with that. They were in love for a while and were going to get married until life went wrong, and she turned bad. Guys, we're in Hell. We need to get out of Hell, because it's messing with your brains. Trust me on this one, I just got here, so it's obvious to me. We've got to get out."

"Can you trump us out?" asked Karen.

Floyd could not. "That's okay, though, because literal Death, long robe, scythe, can't get in and she's stalking me out there. So we need to settle this Karesh Ni problem, and then we'll be free to go."

"What does Death have to do with Karesh Ni?" asked Nick, and before anyone could respond, he added, "I get the lich-Death link, but what makes you think if we do something about Karesh Ni, literal Death isn't going to keep waiting for you?"

Floyd looked at him. "Because Mustermann said so. Don't you remember? She said she had calculated the four hundred names of God, or what have you, when she ordered Death to chase us down. That was their power."

Into the silence that followed, Hank admitted, "I did not think of that."

"Yeah. This was obviously Karesh Ni's plan all along, up to and including betraying her and banishing Death so he could live again." Floyd looked around. "He obviously betrayed her, right? When you killed Mustermann, did she die? But Death was obeying someone's orders. Remember when we fought Magog? He said the White Fire had been activated?" Floyd pointed up at the sheet of ardent that covered the sky.

"Actually, I think this was the plan. The Damned cannot hurt the Damned, and yet the lich requires a life to trade for his own. He couldn't off anyone himself, so he set us up to off his servant, Mustermann. We all got played. She got played too, but Karesh Ni was the one behind it. We got played into killing someone. We should not do that again."

There was another silence. "But-" said Nick, and before he could continue, Karen interrupted.

"I would have done the same thing. I would have been played too."

The three of them shared a quiet silence.

"Nick," said Floyd, in peculiar admission. "She tortured us."

"It's like we were deliberately put into a position where we would want to kill her," added Karen, struggling with the words until the came out in a rush.

"Suspiciously so," agreed Floyd.

"So there's no more blame," said Karen. "He's right. Blame in Hell is unproductive."

"But you're not the ones who blame me," said Nick quietly. "It's up to him," and he pointed at me.

They looked at me. I looked at them. Floyd suggested I call Pete.

"No, the dick-bag already specifically told me I need to forgive others for some horse-shit reason that's a load of crap," I said. I pouted like an infant and climbed to my feet. "This is stupid. Let's go save the stupid world," I muttered and offered Nick my hand.

He shook it, and a burden lifted from his shoulders. He stood straighter, his eyes cleared. 

"Hank, you're in this too," said Karen and waved him over. He joined us, and we shared a glum agreement that interpersonal conflict in our current situation was sub-optimal. 

"All right. Let's go before the black guy dies first!" cracked Floyd, and he looked around for a laugh.

"Have you forgotten my close friend Allison, who died just yesterday?" asked Nick in a soft, withering tone. 

"I... oh, crap. You know what? I'm going to stop making jokes."

 

++++

 

The temptation to remain withdrawn whispered to me, and I fought it the way I had in prison. I thought about magic. "Back in the old days, rune constructs were known as the Names of God. To discover one was to get incredible power. I'd always thought that was just because you have new construct, one no one else knows, but now I guess they might have power over death. The ancient mages discovered a bunch of them, but progress slowed down as all the easy ones were found. No new ones have been found in years, so I thought it was a legend. Mary-" I paused, thought, and changed names. "Erica Mustermann must have been discovering them in her server farm."

"Why didn't anyone else try that?" asked Karen.

"Magicians don't really get along with computers, especially the technical applications. It's like the pissing match between physicists and mathematicians in the seventies. When it broke there was great work done, but no one wanted to do it at first."

"But you're a physicist," said Nick.

"Yeah, but I've got an issue," I replied.

"Right." He nodded and obviously wished he hadn't said anything.

"There had to be others," said Hank.

"There really aren't. There aren't many of us, and most are obsessed with old wars for power. Most magicians ignore all of technology if they possibly can. HEM, the people I work for, realized it and hired me, but again, I have that issue." I thought. "In time I'm sure someone would think to run big data on magic as a problem, but I don't think anyone else has yet. Scientific revolutions always happen like that. They're bloody obvious after the fact, but I don't see you coming up with relativity independently either."

"No blame!" interrupted Karen.

"I wasn't blaming. I was just trying to make a point. Maybe it's the same." I thought. "Can we see Mustermann's results? Whatever Karesh Ni is doing, he obviously went to a lot of trouble to set her up, and that had to be some difficulty from the other side. I'd like to read her calculations."

"The Empire is totalled," said Nick, lifting his chin to indicate the hellfire candle that was the hotel. 

"What about the business center?" Hank asked.

We looked at him. 

"I didn't think about that," Nick admitted, and Karen started trotting towards it.

 

Karesh Ni sang, and wil-o-wisps landed in the corpse gas he exhaled. They burned with a devious green flame, giving hints of light instead of illumination and casting contrast shadows. Even under the green flames of the black sky, Karesh Ni was the epicenter of twisted logic. Titan song lifted him in buffets of conflicting melody and disharmonic fugues. The song made war on itself, and the corpse climbed the conflict. When the lich stood, music like a torturer's rack pulled his spine straight, undoing the work of Karen's fists. He stretched as the wil-o-wisps danced in his dim eye-sockets.

In Erica's office I sat down at her computer. The results were meaningless coded output, so I started scrolling through the decryption log to figure out what meant what. She'd approached the peculiar geometry of rune layouts, the multiplicative factor that made an otherwise difficult problem nearly impossible, from a relatively orthodox model. One or two energy inputs in, one output out, these rules were all finite and standard, but after that she had made some very bizarre approximations. Loops couldn't be in linear combination with an output line. There was an enforced branching case filter. She didn't make all combinations and apply the rules as a filter, she applied rules and fit all possible runes to them. A secondary discriminating function operated on trillions of possible constructs and weeded out almost all of them.

She didn't apply any of the usual filters. She had the Silence in there. Woman, if you want to reign in Hell-on-Earth, don't invent the magic that blows it up first. Erica had not given enough fucks.

"Bad guy's coming," said Hank. He stood sentry by the gaping cave mouth of a hole in the wall. The doors were still locked.

"Right. Nick, stay with Martin. Everyone else, come with me," said Karen. She looked around. They nodded, Hank grimly, Floyd in acceptance, Nick with concern. "Got that, Martin?" she demanded.

The woman was trying to Silence the Annihilation? The Annihilation of Fire? What? Why? No, just no. Don't do that.

"That means yes," said Floyd.

"Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die," said Floyd softly, and Karen nodded. They looked to Hank, who agreed. 

Grim Respite. He's lost everything, even life, but he didn't cross death into being dead because- Wait a minute. The division isn't life and death, it's alive and dead, with the border being death. Death is infinitely narrow, which in magic is cutting, like her scythe, but if he could render himself immune to the scythe, then he would inhabit Death. You can't be hurt while you wear the Bastion of Grim Respite. You've given up everything for immunity to further pain. 

"Oh, that's what you're doing," I said and twitched. "Of course. Because you don't know magic." My memory flickered instant replay of the ongoing conversation, and I caught up to the do or die bit. "Guys, you do know what we're doing here, right?" I asked.

They looked at me like an unexpected threat. 

"No," admitted Karen. 

"Fight the bad guy?" asked Nick. 

"You're going to do magic?" suggested Floyd, the same way he might talk of calculus.

"Yes, but you know what I'm doing, right?"

Their eyes said they did not.

"Look, remember when I cut the Desolation from the elevator shaft? There was no good option from that. We could either go down the power conduit feeding a Desolation, which is just an absolutely terrible idea, or I could cut the Desolation without knowing what it did. I picked the latter, and I sort of think that was the right choice, because we didn't die. But now we've got to deal with the lich, and it's the same play. We cut him or deal with him, and while I don't want to deal with him, just cutting him might result in all this badness-" I waved at the visible world in all its flavors of Hell. "-being unleashed on the rest of Earth. Much like how hellfire consumed the Empire and Uluru. That would be bad, right? But we have to cut the lich, because otherwise he'll run around Krakatoa-ing people. Got me?"

"With you," said Karen.

"Erica didn't know magic. She knew rune combinatorics, the algorithms of putting them together, and frankly she was better at it than I am, but she doesn't really know what they do. Ah, we would have been- Whatever. No blame. She worked out five hundred possible constructs or so. They're right here, but her run hadn't finished. She hadn't varied the output runes yet."

No one had any idea what I was blathering about.

"Guys, I can make obvious variants on all of these. You remember how Erica said she had hundreds of names of God? I have hundreds more off the top of my head. We can command Death if she would just show up."

"You summon me?" A dry voice rattled out of desiccated lips.

Want to know something really creepy? Literal Death sneaking up on you.

She remained thin-limbed, beyond emaciated. Flesh had withered away and time carried off her skin, leaving a remnant of old tissue that stretched and flexed over the dry friction of bony joints. Her cartilage was gone. Death smiled at us, she always smiled, with corpse cheek-bones and dim eyes. When I looked long enough I made up eyeballs inside those caves.

"By the Names of God I command you-" I began, printout of constructs in hand, and she interrupted me.

"I have that one."

"No, not-" I sighed aggravated, and crossed the Archer out and slapped down the Predator. "This one."

"That's only one."

"Grah!" I slashed four fast substitutions. "I've got hundreds of these things. Now, I command you to kill Karesh Ni!"

"No. His life is already paid for."

"Yes, but I'm paying you more."

"I only see five."

"What!? I-" I had easily three hundred constructs, each of which could be doubled or tripled. "You really want me to write all of these out?"

"Payment up front."

Goddamn Death. 

"Martin," said Karen. "Get to work."

"What do you mean?" I asked, but her face was grim. Floyd nodded, and the others stood with them.

"Get to work, Martin," Karen repeated, and the four of them left the ruins of the Empire for the burning wastes. It had been so nice just a few days before.

 

"Floyd, gun," demanded Hank once they were outside.

"Got no trumps," said Floyd. "Can't cross the boundary."

"Here," said Nick and offered him a titanic Barrett. 

Hank blinked at him, and noticed Nick's wrist terminated by the barrel. Gun to Nick made a metal to flesh junction.

"I can't shoot," admitted Nick. "Never learned. Meant too, never did. You can?" 

"Decently," said Hank, looking forward and thinking back, and put banana-sized slugs into the lich's head.

Nick had made a Barrett he'd seen somewhere, an anti vehicular weapon that was the most striking visually but not necessarily the most useful against a human target. At the expense of extra weight, unwieldy size, and difficulty moving ammunition, the weapon gained absurd destructive capacity per bullet in a manner that wasn't needed against human targets. Other guns could be moved easier, fired faster, gotten into position quicker, and done so with no meaningful loss of efficacy against a biological target. It's not like someone's going to survive a 30-06 because the bullet doesn't have that little bit of extra.

Karesh Ni ate .50 BMG to the face with a startled expression and picked slugs out of his teeth.

Hank rapid fired ten rounds, eight direct hits, half of them liquefying on impact. Karesh Ni wept lead tears. The only thing that phased him was the surprise of impact, and before the echoes finished crashing from earth to black sky, Hank opened up with the M 240B. The noise of it was a secondary attack. By the end of the drum the barrel was white hot and floating, and they could see the trace of the rounds before exiting.

Hank finished the drum as Karesh Ni awoke to the nature of the attack, brushing mushroomed bullets from his chest and face like gnats. 

Hank swapped barrels and put another drum though, just to be sure.

"How's that working for you?" asked Karesh Ni.

"Worth a shot," said Hank. Dispensed brass vaporized and seeped back into Nick, and the living rushed the dead.

Karesh Ni looked vaguely confused and dropped Elder Lightning. Hank stood in the hellfire glare of burning Uluru, and sang my rack, dumping power into the last spell I'd cast. He unleashed a coda of Verdant Apocalypse.

Hank was A) somewhat deaf due to all the gunfire, B) completely inexperienced at magic, and C) in the worst place on Earth to experiment. The last place that spell had been cast, the echoes of which he was reviving, were vibrating from beneath the rock of Tartarus where the Titans sang runes of doom. Naturally the spell mutated as it executed, merged with Elder Lightning, and the two brought thunder flowers springing from heavens and Earth. Ebony blossoms of incandescent flame exploded with sound and fury, ripping apart ground and sky. Splashes of lava aerosolized, solidified in mid air, and fell in sulfurous rain, but it was twisted by the Tempest of Fire and Air. It fell as hail that burned. 

Hank exploded and Floyd rushed to provide first aid while Nick covered them. Karen decided to run across rain-drops of burning magma to charge Karesh Ni in midair. Even as backlash was ripping his face apart like gunfire hadn't, he staggered on invisible supports. Karen sucker punched him, but unfortunately for her, Karesh Ni didn't cast magic from his jimmy. Her next shot caught him in mouth as his tongue tried to still the chaos, and she knocked the runes out of order.

His shields fought her, but they had twisted with the Cataclysm. When she struck, thunder blossomed at impact, ripping through her fists and his flesh. Karen did not relent. She tore great holes in his guard, but it was his own magic that burned him, and boils opened on withered flesh. 

"A Stone of Rivening," whispered voices on the wind, climbing through the air to scuttle down the lich's lips. The titans' power surged. He was held by magic too deep, and their power was a double edged spike, designed to hurt both parties. But it was aimed deep at his throat, and the side towards Karen sizzled. 

"Riven from the Stone," whispered the wind.

Karen's life ended in a snap-shot instant. There was a four fight contract with a title option, underwritten by endorsements and training deals. A living stipend floated in her agent's mind. An end to aerobics in the morning, to make time for directed training, and an end to Self Defence Lunch Hour Blast. She stood on the cusp of a renaissance in women's boxing. The old champions had established their dynasties, but had not established them in the crowds. She could-

Karen punched the Obelisk of Rivening into Karesh Ni's throat, and her right hand shattered in a thousand ways. 

In an instant the titans turned on the lich, and their spell tore him limb from limb. He screamed, the lights dancing in his eyes thrown out to glitter in the mad dark world. He fell out of the sky. Karen fell out of the sky too and smashed onto sharp rocks.

 

"Five hundred, sixty two!" I yelled, and slashed double connection on paper. "Do we have a deal?"

"We do. Who will pay a life?" asked Death. We faced each other over Erica's broken table.

"No one! I'm paying you in the Names of God!"

"Death charges a life, but don't worry. I always gets paid." She smiled at me with cheeks drawn tight to tendon, showing her dry teeth. I heard a Rivening on the wind, and Death caught it, leaping out to ride a gasp of air. She vanished.

I ran too.

Ayer's Rock had fractured into two great halves, a barn-door from the underworld to the sky. The black dome disintegrated as it burned with the stars appearing behind. The titans' song defied them all. It gained as fury wavered, and I heard a fine, lower set of notes hiding behind it. Karesh Ni's voice still echoed curses. 

Perhaps everything was lost.

A black figure on a guant horse rode across the hollows of the sky with four men behind her, and their hooves beat a drum. That drum covered the curses of the lich in perfect cancelling harmony and as the titans crescendoed to their peak, the final note split the air into silence.

No one moved, and I think I stopped breathing.

A series of tinny, flat sounds echoed from very far away, and if the world wasn't unnaturally still, I would have missed them. They were small, like chain links falling broken onto rock. From the central cavity of split Uluru, Mathy climbed out of prison and waved. There was nothing on his hands or feet. I waved back. He saluted me, and walked away, pulling the paint smear of blackness from sky to fall around his shoulders like a cloak. 

The night sky came back with all its complexity, echoes of stars, a hint of cloud, and the distant fuzz of galaxies. The fires in the Empire snuffed out, leaving the smoke an unmoored pillar that wandered away up into the sky. 

When I got to the others Floyd had stabilized Hank. My apprentice's tongue had been burned out, and I think his eyes caught fire, but he wasn't dead. We could work with not dead. He responded when spoken too. 

Karen was in worse shape. She'd fallen probably forty feet into bare stone, and the list of what was broken was identical to the list of things she needed to stay alive. Nick called 000, and reported we were at the center of the giant mushroom of death that had previously tried to eat the sky. The dispatcher asked for an address. They started fighting over whether legal conflicts regarding the Empire prohibited EMS response. Nick hung up on her, turned into an Ambulance, and we made time for Yulara.


End file.
